


we are who we are (because we’re afraid of the people we could be)

by ziraseal



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: F/F, Low Chaos Emily but not Clean Hands Emily, Slow Burn, Unrequited Crush, an actual slow burn, some violence (because it's dishonored??), this story is heavily centered on Emily's missions for the first half
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 40,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21642544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziraseal/pseuds/ziraseal
Summary: She can’t go to Wyman, who smiles at her and laughs with this crushing innocence. Where is there place for a charming, trickster nature among the void that plagues her dreams?She can’t go to the Captain of the Dreadful Wale. She feels as though she can almost pardon Meagan, and yet what Billie did was unforgivable.She can’t go to Alexi. Alexi’s not here anymore because her Empress wasn’t strong enough when it mattered most (that’s the one the Outsider loves to taunt her about).So she goes to the doctor.
Relationships: Alexandria Hypatia/Emily Kaldwin, Emily Kaldwin/Billie Lurk (one-sided)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 54





	1. Entropy

**A Long Day in Dunwall**

The fear that courses through her heart prevents her from utilizing the logic that her father had spent years drilling into her, since she was eleven. Instead, she clumsily fights through the streets, trying her best to knock out enemies as she goes. Alexi Mayhew’s blood is already on this blade, and even if these men have slaughtered civilians and guards still loyal to the Kaldwins, she’s not sure who she is if she violently slits a throat with civilians nervously watching through the windowpanes. 

It worries her. She never heard much about what her father did during the rat plague. What if Alexi, her dear sweet Alexi, is the first person to die from the sword in her hands? No, no, there were guards Corvo killed in the throne room, when for a moment it seemed like he would defeat Delilah single handedly.

She hides in an alley after kicking a guard in the nose, waiting for him to lose his bearing on her. While cornered in the dark aside a dumpster, she glances down at the blade, collapsed in her hands. This weapon is well known across Dunwall, this curse. The Courier has photographed it during ceremonies and parades and written elaborate pieces about it― especially after Piero Joplin, it’s ingenious inventor, passed away. For a moment, she loses herself in the memories of the Hounds Pits Pub. Then, she hears the heavy footsteps of a boot crunching the nearby gravel, headed down the steps to the miniature alleyway. She steels herself and leaps at her target like a cat, swinging around his throat and hanging onto his back with her legs as she chokes him unconscious with all of her might. 

“You shouldn’t have done this,” she muttered in his ear. “But perhaps I deserved it.”

It’s fitting to put him in the dumpster, pulling the heavy lid back down and leaving him to wallow in the garbage for the afternoon. 

An upper class woman sitting on the steps leading to her apartment across the street gives her a glare, as though Emily cares about how scandalous it looks for the Empress of the Isles to be throwing bodies in dumpsters. She turns down another alley and thinks about her immediate plan of action.

A little blue bottle rests beneath a piece of scrap wood. Emily knocks away the debris and picks up the vial, noticing the words Addermire in delicate script on the glass. Either end of the vial has delicate metal casing keeping the liquid in place. She uncaps it and takes a sniff, immediately hit with spices and a hint of something salty instead of the medicinal aroma of the S&J elixir that she uses to staunch bleeding. Strange. 

It had dust on it; this hasn’t been left behind by one of Luca Abele’s lackeys today. 

She knows that Addermire is a word thrown around with public health and medical reports from Karnaca. But Emily also knows not to drink random liquids she finds under trash in the alleys of Dunwall. 

Pocketing it for later, she glances up and finds a ventilation shaft. The newly made burglar leaps up and continues towards the docks. Addermire. Addermire. That has a connection to… wait! Wasn’t Ichabod Boyle murdered near here? Yes, that’s his office, where that balcony is! She leaps across, a jump she wouldn’t normally attempt with beggars watching in broad daylight, and focuses her strength on not immediately letting go of the rusted metal she’s caught, slipping over the railing and through the door. 

Another guard drops to the ground, his tongue lolling out of his mouth as she gently sets him across a couch. Either they’re heavier than they look, or she’s getting used to the weight of these thugs-in-uniforms. He grunts a bit but otherwise doesn’t draw attention to her.

Emily makes the call not to disturb the other two guards, a floor below her, as they inspect the decaying corpse of Ichabod Boyle. Addermire… Addermire…

Yes, the Addermire Solutions came from Karnaca, from the Institute. She remembered reading a report on them when a citizen, Lucia Pastor, had written directly to the Empress, discussing the mining crisis down in Serkonos. This liquid, tucked inside her jacket, was a product of that region, meant to help combat all sorts of illnesses. But Dunwall already had Piero’s Spiritual Remedies and S&J elixirs. They had no need to import another brand this far north. 

So why was this bottle near the crime scene of Ichabod Boyle’s grizzly murder?

Perhaps there wasn’t much to look into here, and the Crown Killer, undoubtedly from Karnaca, had simply dropped a perfectly good vial of medicine from Serkonos in an alleyway while fleeing the results of his carnage. Perhaps not. 

Still, it gave her insight. This foreign bottle of elixir meant that the assassin came to Dunwall prepared, instead of purchasing from a nearby store. For someone so ruthless as the Crown Killer to keep tools at his disposal… it reminded her of her father, during the plague. 

There wasn’t much time to lose before Ramsey’s men would harass the captain of the Dreadful Wale, destroying Emily’s chance to escape. She swept the rest of Ichabod Boyle’s offices for clues about the killer, his location now deftly attributed to Karnaca. Footprints, discarded ammunition, a torn piece of cloth― anything would help.

“Something’s in here with us.”

“It’s probably just Corporal Zacharias going to take a smoke break outside. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Doing what has to be done in order to create a window of opportunity, Emily tosses a fine bottle of whiskey towards the wall behind the guards, wincing at the shatter. She bolts as they turn their backs and rushes through the back door out onto the streets. They let out exclamations and swears, but it matters about as much as the color of her throne to Emily as she sprints through the streets, brushing past shocked civilians and guards, vaulting over a warehouse rooftop, and diving into the water. 

Bullets whizz into the waves next to her but she keeps swimming out into the bay where the Dreadful Wale rests, adrenaline keeping her from thinking logically. 

A single, battletorn brown hand pulls her by the wrist onto the wooden deck of the ship. 

“I’ve never seen an Empress sopping wet and as soured as you. The name is Meagan Foster, this is the Dreadful Wale.”

A bullet ricochets off the metal railing, but the woman with one eye and one hand doesn’t even flinch. Emily spots guards heading down to a little wooden lifeboat beached at the shore and Meagan calmly motions for them to move to the cockpit, starting up the engine and beginning necessary protocols to commence a voyage. 

“If I’m soured, it’s because my father was turned to stone.”

“Ah. Delilah?”

Emily gives her a long stare before nodding, “Delilah. And Luca Abele. How did you know?”

“That’s what I came to warn you of, I’m afraid. I would have come sooner, but my partner, Anton Sokolov, was kidnapped in Karnaca two weeks ago. Once we’re past Kingsparrow, we won’t have to worry about any Royal Navy attempting to stop us, not with this coup underway.”

Though a little shocked at how put together this woman seems in the face of disaster, Emily immediately feels relief at the mention of the old Royal Physician. Anton was… a mess of a man… but he was brilliant! He could help her defeat Delilah, no doubt. 

“What about those guards getting ready to head over here?”

“In a lifeboat with holes mysteriously drilled into the hull overnight? I wasn’t going to risk an inspection.”

Perhaps this Meagan Foster could help her too. Emily settles down on a bed next to the helm, presumably belonging to this miracle woman, and puts her head in her hands. The fatigue sets in, her lungs aching from sprinting and then immediately diving underwater. Her feet aren’t used to running on the rubble of toppled statues. She didn’t even have the chance to bury Alexi’s body, but she can’t go back, not if she wants to rescue her father and save her empire.

The poor girl falls asleep in Foster’s cot, having escaped with a mere scrap of her dignity. 

**Aboard the Dreadful Wale**

“So… where are you from, Meagan?”

The captain glances up from her stew, across a weapon strewn table, to a wide-eyed Empress. Perhaps she shouldn’t have asked. It’s increasingly obvious to Emily that, in order to regain what was lost, she will need to deal with unsavory types. Hell, Anton Sokolov had killed people in the name of scientific advancement during the Rat Plague. After he had left court, Corvo admitted that Sokolov had kept people imprisoned, infecting them with the sickness and testing his elixirs on them. And yet Corvo allowed Sokolov to tutor Emily on natural philosophy and medicine and science! So even if Meagan is a shady character, chances are she’ll do more good than harm.

“From Dunwall. Just a street orphan.”

Questions beg to be released from her restrained lips. How did a Dunwall street rat become the captain of a ship from Serkonos, a captain that was willing to give shelter to an Empress? How did she know Sokolov? How did she lose her arm and her eye (both of which looked like recent injuries)? How did she know about Delilah?

Why did the Heart whisper that she was hiding something?

“Are you trained in fighting? In case we’re attacked on the way to Karnaca?”

This time, Meagan smirks. She finishes her stew and stands, offering Emily a hand up. They walk to the deck, a dense fog preventing them from continuing their journey but setting a mysterious mood over the river valley they are traveling through.

Emily almost doesn’t catch the subtle body language as the other woman picks up a large knife (the kind meant for hacking at whale meat), and takes a swipe at her.

“Woah! Okay, then!”

Corvo’s sword springs to life and catches the other blade just as it’s about to slice her ear off. She pushes Meagan away from her with a kick and begins timing her parries just right, again and again. 

They move around the deck like a dance. Meagan’s not just a street fighter, Emily can sense it in the way she moves her feet that someone _good_ taught her. The way her face shows no emotion as she fights, a resolve of steel.

“Strength and dexterity are only part of the fight,” Meagan calmly says, going for a stab that Emily dodges. “It takes cleverness and timing to win.”

She should be expecting the tin can, Pratchett’s Jellied Eats, as it flies at her forehead and distracts her. The snack cutting her eyebrow is enough to stun her, even as she attempts to shake it off and keep going. Meagan’s playing dirty, and it gives her the advantage to rush past Emily and choke her from behind with only one arm, nearly knocking her unconscious. As her vision darkens, the Empress taps the stump on her shoulder and is let go.

“Okay. Okay. If Delilah’s assassins come in the night I will trust that your ass can save Sokolov if I fall.”

Meagan smirks, “It won’t come to that. You would have won the fight if you hadn’t littered your snack this afternoon. I expect you to clean up after yourself from now on.”

“Deal.”

They practice fighting every night, when it’s too dark to continue their voyage, and it gives Emily the distraction she desperately needed.

**At the Edge of the World**

_ALL HAIL THE NEW EMPRESS_

_HER MAJESTY_

_DELILAH KALDWIN_

It’s not like the Rat Plague, really. The people here are tired and slightly wheezy from silver dust, nervous when they hear the skitter of bloodflies, but they’re not moaning and bleeding in the streets like her subjects in Dunwall were fifteen years ago. That being said, she feels frustrated that no city in the Isles seems to be in perfect health, ever, under her rule. She could shift the blame to Hiram Burrows and his destructive six-month reign over the world, but she’s not so sure he was responsible for _all_ of this misery. What did the world look like under Jessamine’s rule, outside of the palace walls? 

Sure, when she was a kid, she’d been to the Boyle manor once or twice, but really other than that she’d not been allowed out much. It was only when she was kidnapped by the Pendletons that she realized how destroyed and desolate Dunwall really was. The crumbled buildings. The swarms of rats in the streets. The acid spewing river krusts along the shores. Did Hiram Burrows really create all of that, or did the Kaldwin dynasty have that blood on their hands as well?

Who would want to live in her Empire?

It’s not that she blames Corvo for doing the right thing, honestly, but seeing a similar destruction in Karnaca as Meagan pulls her skiff past all these buildings makes her wonder. If it would have been better if her father had stolen her from Kingsparrow and raised her out on a farm in the countryside. 

“... and you’ll have to disable the watchtower before I can come and pick you up from Addermire. Is that all clear?”

Emily feels like a kid again, about to face the wrath of Calista Curnow. She nods and pretends to be checking her crossbow and pistol, ignoring the single eye roll given by Meagan as the skiff draws near the docks closest to Addermire Station. 

“Try not to kill the Alchemist. She and Sokolov are friends.”

  
The Empress bites back a retort, instead choosing to leap up onto the docks and walk away. She feels stupid, with only a bandana covering her face, but she’s also swapped out for a different coat, one that Meagan stole from an aristocrat in a port they’d stopped to refuel at. Her hair was always in a specific display at court, and instead she’s let it loose but tucked inside her jacket as she sets a cap on her head (similar to the one Cecelia wore), obscuring her face from afar.

_WINSLOW_ _SAFE COMPANY_

_BUILT FOR GENERATIONS!_

She wonders how Celelia is doing, still maintaining the Hound Pits Pub for the new owner. Emily should have said goodbye and made sure she was safe before leaving Dunwall. 

The people at the docks come and go and drink and gamble and bicker about shipments. A bartender offers a glass of lemonade, though he ran out of ice days ago. One man lazily fishes, only catching and releasing little minnows and muttering thanks that he hasn’t snared a hagfish. One woman captures Addermire with a set of pristine silvergraph equipment and for a moment, Emily thinks the city isn’t so bad. 

Time to try out her powers. Time to see if that dream was real. 

Emily has been too nervous aboard the Dreadful Wale to chance it but there's no time like the present. She hides behind a few crates and focuses on an open window above, letting the strange magic pull her up to the room above the docks. Of course the first thing Emily sees when she peers inside is a painting of High Overseer Campbell.

“This is going to be a long day,” she mutters to herself.

_RAZINA ROSEWATER JELLY_

_THE AMAZING NEW TASTE_

_SENSATION_

_FIFTY-ONE YEARS OF QUALITY!_

Not an hour later, she makes her first kills. She doesn’t want to, of course, she would have rather solved the conflict peacefully. But there are two grand guardsmen harassing a merchant closer and closer to the Wall of Light and she knows the poor man’s life is in danger. She reaches for the crossbow at her hip and fires twice, creating two new bodies and one civilian scared out of his wits, scrambling for the safety of the docks.

She hides the bodies and scatters into the shadows, only to find a shrine to the Outsider just next door.

Lovely.

He taunts her about the killings, takes delight in the slow ruin of the city, and bestows more of those strange whalebone carvings (like the one she found as a child at the Hound Pits) upon her. Emily knows she shouldn’t have accepted his powers, but perhaps she can use this magic to help her do as little killing as possible. It would be wise not to become the Crown Killer she seeks to destroy. 

Addermire. _Addermire_ is her focus. 

(Walking past the office of the Vice Overseer, she realizes she probably should have gone to the Abbey while fleeing Dunwall. No doubt Yul Khulan, the High Overseer, would have rallied behind her during the coup. A push to assault the Tower with an army of holy men would have been more honorable in the eyes of the Empire than this sneaking and sulking in the dark, even if she did perish in the process.)

_CAPORET PAPERWORKS_

_ESTABLISHED IN KARNACA_

_1814_

Addermire is her fucking focus. No distractions.

(It’s unfortunate because she knows now that the villain the High Abbey seeks to rebel against is the one who will bring her back to her father. She remembers Overseer Martin teaching her prayers to help with the nightmares she had during the time of the plague. She feels as though she is defacing a memory.)

Emily takes her time gently luring guards away and knocking them out. Like a game of cat and mouse. In an effort to bypass the Addermire Station, she decides to climb over the building with her powers. She picks a balcony and is about to leap across when she realizes she’s staring at lab equipment, crates of medicine, dried bloodflies, and a poster of Addermire. 

Hypatia lives here.

Emily scurries in and immediately looks for clues, hints, speculations on the crown killer. But there’s a layer of dust to everything. Addermire has been closed to the public on the Duke’s orders for some time, she’s heard, but it seems like the good doctor has not been allowed back home by any means. On the desk, she finds an audiograph and flips the lever.

_“I spend less and less time here at my apartment, but my work at Addermire demands it. After the horrible failures of my first serum, I’m more determined than ever to help the miners. It’s not my say how hard the Duke and his cronies drive the workers… but until he sees reason, I’ll do what I can to make their lives better and to provide comfort to their families. It’s my obsession, this work, and the impact it will have on the least privileged people in Karnaca. Studying the original plague elixirs… I’m close to something.”_

The Empress pries open a crate with her sword only to find more of the Addermire vials inside, just like the one she’d found near Ichabod Boyle’s office. They’re distributed from here, only enough to keep people from rioting and demanding a better solution to the bloodfly fever. Such rarity _guaranteed_ that the Crown Killer had to be from Karnaca. 

Most of the plants in her apartment are dead, adding to the grim environment, but Emily pauses at the beautiful butterfly collection Hypatia keeps on her wall. The insects are immaculately organized, with such vibrant colors and labels (intricate facts and observations beneath each specimen). There’s something soft and organic about the doctor’s apartment, even if she’s not actively occupying the space. Emily stares at the painting of Hypatia longer than she meant to. The silver hair just at her temples and the crows feet near her eyes. The pensive stare. She looks older, in the painting, than she probably is in real life, but that tends to happen with Sokolov’s style. 

_MOIR & SON _

_TANNING BOX_

_LET YOUR BODY BATHE IN YOUR OWN PERSONAL SUNLIGHT!_

Not used to her powers, she teleports across the street to the rooftop of the Addermire Station, and of course blunders into a guard.

“Hey!” the woman screeches, drawing her sword.

Emily’s still a little dazed from the spell as a blade slashes her across the face. She raises her father’s sword just in time to block the next swing and kicks out, tripping the elite member of the city watch. It happens again, in her need to silence the fight and prevent the other guards from knowing about her. She slits the throat of the woman and tries to ignore the way the blood stains the cuffs of her jacket.

Empress Emily Drexel Lela Kaldwin has officially killed three people, and it terrifies her that she’s trained and prepared to kill more. 

**The Good Doctor**

She rides the carriage towards Addermire in uncomfortable silence, glaring at the Duke’s palace to her right. The rails are dented and warped in some places, causing jarring bumps and shakes on her ride over. 

Emily vows not to have a party for at least five years until all the cities in the Isles can give satisfactory reports of infrastructure maintenance. Restoring apartments and fixing roads… hell, despite the darkest deeds of this city, she’s started eyeing the giant windmills dotted here and there on the city horizon as technology they can bring north. There isn’t a place in the world lacking wind; it would be a perfect solution to the whale oil shortage. 

This time, instead of sneaking her way around the inside, she climbs. For the past two weeks on the Dreadful Wale, she’s been working on her physical strength, scurrying up and down the mast while Meagan was busy fixing the engine and swimming behind the boat as it lumbered along to bolster her endurance. 

It reflects in the way she advances like a cat up to the tower, pausing when she catches a conversation about Alexandria Hypatia.

Two knocked out guards and key later, she’s standing in the office of the alchemist.

“Dr. Hypatia, you graduated from the Academy of Natural Philosophy in Dunwall in 1938,” Emily bemusedly reads aloud, from the diploma inside the glass cabinet. “The youngest Doctor of Medicine from the school in fifty years, at the age of twenty-two. Huh. That would have been the year I was coronated. I suppose that makes you thirty-six or thirty-seven.”

Young to be in charge of an entire institute of medicine. She must be _brilliant_ to be given the honor. Then again, Emily had heard that Duke Theodonis was a very strategic and generous leader, placing the right people in the right places to effectively govern Serkonos (no doubt better than Emily governed Dunwall).

She finds a audiograph in the office, just like the apartment, though this time Hypatia is admitting to some sort of fatigue syndrome? Blacking out and losing her memory?

It puts Emily on edge. If the best doctor in the city falls ill, who is left to advocate for the health of the common folk?

The lack of light frustrates her. Addermire Institute, though peppered with soldiers and staff, is cold and unemotional. Even if it is a place of study instead of a hospital, there’s no reason why there cannot be lighting and art and joy. 

(But Dunwall Tower is the outcome, really, to attempting to brighten a dark place. All the flower and music in the world can’t erase what the Lord Regent and Campbell and Daud did in those walls.)

For the most part, she leaves the staff and guards alone. Emily doubts they will bring her closer to finding Hypatia and she doesn’t have as much need for the coin purses on their belts as she thought she might. Emily is skilled enough to pacify them, but there is a forgotten section of the Institute with blood smeared on the walls and a body torn apart for fun that makes her realize that the soldiers may very well be here to protect Hypatia from the Crown Killer as best as they can. 

So she leaves them be.

That is, until she watches a guard blatantly murder a servant trying to recount the memory of a monster he saw. The servant, Hamilton, curled up in the chair and muttering about a figure dragging a bloody body a few nights prior. Claiming that Hypatia knew something was amiss.

A pistol is aimed at his head, and before Emily could do anything, the guard shoots him.

“What happened?!” blurts another soldier, in the colors of a lower ranked individual, rushing into the room of interrogation. 

“He… he tried to choke me. Must have been infected with the bloodfly fever… poor guy…” 

Emily narrows her eyes. Just how dishonorable can someone get? She watches the two guards leave the body and the room, meandering through the halls. The lower ranked guard slumps to the floor with a sleep dart in his shoulder, but the elite member of the Grand Guard’s coat is suddenly stained with even more red than usual. 

Taking Hamilton’s key, she makes her way back to the tower, practically sprinting up the stairs past Hypatia’s office. She’s almost to the door when a sharp pain hits her in the shoulder. 

“Ah! By the Void!”

Hamilton, despite being dead, has gotten the better of her. A bolt sticks out of her coat, a small trickle of blood beginning to grow and grow; reminding her, yet again, that she is human. 

Emily takes a deep breath. Once, when she was younger, her father shot her with his crossbow in the leg to show her how to deal with the pain and how to remove a bolt on her own. Two years later he did it again with a bullet in the other leg. Captain Alexi Mayhew was about ready to strangle him both times but Emily always thought the advice was some of the best he had given her. Once the bolt is out, she searches Hamilton’s room for cloth and takes the time to bandage herself up with one of his shirts. She takes a swig of S&J elixir to dull the pain and grimaces at the taste.

Hamilton’s journal details his suspicions of the Addermire staff and notes a name. Vasco. Finding him would be her next step. 

The Recuperation Room nearly makes her vomit. It’s filled to the brim with bloodfly nests. She loads a flammable bolt into her crossbow and aims at the red nest, else it fill up with flies once more.

How can the alchemist stand to live and work in these conditions? She lights a few of the bottles of rubbing alcohol on fire and tosses them at the nests when she runs out of flammable bolts, but the fiber structure supporting the nest remains behind.

“Disgusting. I know I sound high and mighty saying it, but this task really is beneath me,” Emily chuckles.

She finds the laboratory beyond the Recuperation Room, equally devoid of light and life save for a dim glow of a desk lamp and the squeamish sound of someone dissecting a dead thing. Emily quietly makes her way down the steps, noting the dead bloodflies plastered against the walls. Something’s not right.

The lab equipment reminds her of Anton and Piero, as well as the muttering beneath Hypatia’s breath. Emily approaches gently, so as not to startle her, and lets out a slight cough to get the woman’s attention.

Before she can get a word in, Dr. Hypatia turns;

“Are you a patient of mine? I’m sorry, I should know that.”

Emily tries asking her questions, but the doctor mumbles and stutters through her thoughts. Something isn’t right. This is one of the most brilliant minds in Karnaca, and she can’t even recall what had happened to Sokolov. And… and she’s hearing voices. Someone’s calling her? There’s no one else making noise, aside from the occasional intercom announcement. 

She leaves the doctor to her work. If it even is work. Something tells Emily that this woman is so disoriented that she’s repeating the same dissection over and over.

A cadaver lies on a table in the back of the lab, though Emily notes that it’s a Nest Keeper. Perhaps someone from the Institute staff that fell to the fever? Or maybe some poor soul from the streets of Karnaca, body swarming with flies (both small and large). Behind the laboratory is where it got creepy. The body that Emily had found in the forgotten wing almost an hour ago… it had been missing its head. And here was the head of a Grand Guard, bloody beyond recognition and resting on a stand.

Could Hypatia be the―

“Hey, over here,” a weak voice called.

“Are you… are you alright?” 

The person lying on the cot is covered in bloody bandages, but conscious enough to give her instructions. He claims to be Vasco, the assistant alchemist, and additionally claims that “Alexandria” is the Crown Killer. That’s enough to make her want to scurry out of the lab and form an attack plan, but he lays wounded fingers on her wrist and begs her to cure the poor woman.

Emily is about to give him a hesitant “yes” when, naturally, a bookcase slams in her face.

She goes flying back, glass hitting her face, and gets pinned beneath the piece of furniture; realizing quickly that it hides her. Or perhaps the monster isn’t quite looking for her. She’s just had the wind knocked out of her, but has enough sense to hold her breath anyway as the creature looks around the room, sniffing like a wolfhound.

It― _she_ ― has terrifying yellow eyes. 

A scratchy and sadistic voice completely unlike the dreamy, lost tone of Hypatia.

Her posture is twisted and wrong, and her strength and agility are far too quick for a human (at least, a human without the influence of the Void’s magic).

The beast kills Vasco with a simple snap of the neck, using only one hand, and casually tosses him aside. Then, it flies up into the rafters of the laboratory. Emily lets out a groan under her breath and pushes herself out from under the bookcase, stopping only to use her Far Reach spell to retrieve the safe combination from Vasco’s belt.

A window shutter allows her the escape into fresh, salty air where she takes a deep breath and gives the guards below her a look of pity. Hopefully she can reach the cure before the Crown Killer washes the walls of the Institute in soldier blood. Her pistol is ready, as well. She doesn’t want to do it, but if the beast jumps out from the shadows, it will come to that. Emily makes damn fucking sure to close the shutter behind her. 

Disease Treatment. She has to make it to Disease Treatment. And she has to remember the code, nine-zero-two.

“I’m glad I paid attention when Piero taught me about lab equipment,” she mutters. 

Retrieving blood from a bloodfly-infected corpse was not on her to-do list for the day, but if it puts an end to the Crown Killer without killing Hypatia, it’s a necessity. Heats the serum. Re-administers it to the syringe. She follows Vasco's instructions to the letter, and hopes to the Void that he knew what he was doing.

If Vasco had figured this all out one month earlier, maybe Ichabod Boyle wouldn’t have been murdered and the Dunwall City Watch wouldn’t have finally been motivated to turn on the Empress, but Vasco was just ripped to shreds by the Crown Killer, so she can’t place any more blame on him than that. 

She takes the finalized serum to the Recuperation Room and prepares herself. If she can just get behind the doctor without being seen, heard or… smelled? Then, she can inject the cure and hopefully fix all of this for good. 

Easier said than done.

She pushes the double doors open and hears the sinister voice of the killer muttering to itself. 

It― _she_ is wandering around on the first floor of the laboratory, hunched over and patrolling. Hunting. She hears the murderous woman take in a deep breath to smell the Nest Keeper corpse and Emily hopes that she cannot be detected. Her footsteps are silent. Her magic is ready. She waits for the doctor to round a corner and follows with a Far Reach spell. 

Time seems to slow as she reaches up and forces the syringe needle into the other woman’s shoulder.

The Crown Killer’s body begins convulsing, and she falls to the floor. 

“No! No! No! Not back to sleep! I won’t go! I won’t give it back!”

Emily kneels down as the yellow eyes become brown again. Soft. Alexandria Hypatia’s skin returns to a pinker, healthier tone. She lets out a groan and looks extremely dazed, but pacified. The Empress props her up against the wall. Emily gently forces the doctor to look into her face.

“Dr. Hypatia?”

“Yes… I’m sorry… something’s not right with me… maybe I contracted something, working with infectious samples.” 

The danger seems as though it’s gone, and despite the nervous fluttering of her heart, begging her to flee in case Hypatia turns again… Emily takes a bloody hand and holds it in her own. She makes eye contact that she hopes is reassuring.

“No, someone was poisoning you, but you should be better now. I found some alchemical notes and made a counter-serum.”

“Poisoning me?”

Emily squeezes the bloody hand, “Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of it. If… if you need a place to lay low for a few days, come find us. I’m staying with an ally on a boat called the Dreadful Wale.”

_Meagan is going to kill me._

The doctor remains slumped against the wall, her head in her hands, as Emily stands up. She doesn’t want to leave the poor woman, but the watchtower still needs to be disabled. 

A pause.

Emily reaches into her coat and pulls out the other S&J elixir she’d brought with her. No doubt the doctor has a closet full of them somewhere, but Emily doubts she will be able to move for the next hour, if not a full day. It rests in the doctor’s lap for a moment… then Alexandria's hands gently move away from her face and pick up the vial, the older woman staring at it in confusion as she struggles to realize what it is. 

“Maybe this will help, if you have a headache or any pain from the counter-serum. You should lie down, or get some fresh air outside, if you can.”

“I… I will… thank you…”

She finds a beautiful painting of the doctor in the office, and carefully uses her father’s sword to tear it down. It’s not in Sokolov’s style, which is strange, but he’s not the only person in the world who can paint. Meagan pulls up once she’s powered down the watchtower, and the two of them quickly flee the scene before any guards catch them snooping around. 

“Did you find the Crown Killer?”

“Yes. I invited her to stay aboard the ship for a few days,” Emily sighs, over the roar of the waves.

Meagan gives her a glare, and for a moment Emily thinks she might get pushed off the side of the skiff. She quickly explains herself before that happens, and they discuss their plans to find Sokolov.

The further they travel from Addermire, the sunnier the sky seems to get. 

**Aboard the Dreadful Wale**

Captain Foster would never admit it, but she’s pleased with Emily fixing the water leak in the engine room. The hallways and deck of the Dreadful Wale begin looking cleaner and more colorful. Meagan’s even put a wanted poster of Emily up in her bedroom for fun (it’s insulting that she’s only worth a bounty of twenty thousand, when she distinctly remembers her father’s bounty during the rat plague being _thirty thousand_ ). 

Unsurprisingly, The Crown K― _Alexandria_ took Emily up on her offer and is staying aboard, though she spends a great deal of time sleeping and recuperating. Meagan demands that Emily, too, spends a few days resting and planning her next mission. Weapons need to be cleaned and sharpened, wounds need to be treated, all the valuables Emily picked up need to be sold to black market dealers in order to bring in coin for gear _and_ for ship fuel. Toppling a citywide conspiracy creates decent income, but Meagan won’t admit that either.

When Alexandria does wake, Emily is at the doorway with a soft smile and a tray of warm food.

“Oh! It’s you… will you stay with me for a moment?” the alchemist asks.

Closing the door for privacy, she places the tray on the counter and moves to the bed. Ever so slowly, she sits down next to Hypatia and glances at the door one more time to make sure it’s completely shut. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Meagan, but she imagines that what happened at Addermire is still too sensitive and the conversation ought to be contained to the two women in the room. Her diplomatic Empress training is good for something, apparently.

“Who are you?” 

Emily pauses. She’s never really been asked that question before. There’s usually someone announcing her majesty to the court, or people know who she is because there are statues of her on every other street corner (she was, admittedly, full of herself when she was coronated at ten years old). 

“I’m Emily Kaldwin. I’m here to… well… make things right in the city.”

Alexandria dreamily nods for a moment, and then her eyes snap up, “You’re the Empress!”

“I _was_. A witch named Delilah Copperspoon orchestrated a coup with Duke Abele and managed to unseat me in Dunwall.”

“Delilah… that name is familiar…”

Emily closes her eyes and can almost imagine her “aunt” whispering instructions into the twisted, murderous version of the doctor sitting next to her.

“Did you ever meet her?”

“I don’t… maybe… it’s all so fuzzy. Whatever happened to me has blocked out quite a bit of my memory. I barely understand what you did for me at Addermire, but I know you cured some ailment. It may take a while before I am restored to my proper self.”

With one hand gently wrapping around the doctor’s shoulders, and one hand gently holding the doctor’s shaky fingers, Emily gives her a reassuring, serious stare, “When you feel you are ready, I will tell you what happened. You deserve to know the truth. Until then, I want you to focus on recovering.”

Frightened brown eyes glance into hers, then look away. The hand squeezes back. Soft breathing mingles with the splash of waves against the metal hull and soft piano music from the Jindosh audiograph. 

“You aren’t like the version of the Empress that the papers talk about.”

“In some ways I am. But… I’m still a person. I’ve had horrible things happen to me, too. I know how hard it can be to recover from trauma.”

“I was… I don’t.... I messed up. I was just trying to help the miners and Vasco and I thought it would be a good idea to… we tested the serums on ourselves. Usually we reserve the wolfhounds for tests but we were pressed for time and we knew we’d be able to record results quicker by studying each other.

“The first time wasn’t so bad. I think. I actually remember feeling stronger and more agile. Vasco too. We continued working on it, mixing in reagents from other sources. But… after that it gets fuzzy. I remember being asked to submit my findings to Duke Abele, and he asked me to continue using the serum so he could observe. After that…”

Emily pats Alexandria on the knee and stands, taking a knife off the serving tray and slicing pieces of pear, sourdough, and brie cheese. She brings a plate down to the bed.

“You need to eat. I imagine you haven’t been able to properly take care of yourself in a while.”

There’s a bottle of Gristol cider on the shelf, and Emily pours two glasses.

“I have to head out soon, but… here’s to healing.”

There’s a look of mesmerization on Hypatia’s face, yet she accepts the drink and they both knock it back in one swoop. Crumbs get in the sheets, but neither of them mind as they enjoy the rest of the night. It’s a better meal than any palace banquet she’s ever attended― she can’t place why.

**The Clockwork Mansion**

_AN INJURY TO ONE OF US IS AN INJURY TO US ALL!_

“Do you want to hear a story about Kirin Jindosh?” **_he_ **asks, pacing around the slab of stone that held them aloft in the Void.

“I really don’t.”

The Outsider gives her a grin and continues his little fable. Jindosh was brilliant, went to far, got kicked out of the Academy. He drives people mad with his inventions, which are absolutely brilliant. She’s heard some version of this story before. 

“You miss Piero,” he chuckles, as though he can read her thoughts. 

(He probably can. The likelihood that this is all inside her head is astronomical.) 

“There’s not a lot of people who will work and work and work without a thought of themselves, who can so easily be pushed to do the wrong thing so long as they get to continue to work. Piero was one of them. So willing to go on with the Loyalist Conspiracy’s nefarious plans so long as they didn’t threaten _him_. Is he any different from Sokolov? From Jindosh? From Hypatia?”

“Shut the fuck up!” Emily hisses, swatting at the spirit.

The Outsider’s form vanishes in a puff of black smoke and then reappears behind her, resting his chin on her shoulder.

“You’re right of course, my bad. They were all going along with what their leaders told them to do, weren’t they? That is the constant. Even Jindosh was just obeying his Duke. Sokolov, his Lord Regent. Great minds often fall under the thumb of the rulers above them, only to find that they greatly enjoy the patronage. And is Hypatia not under your patronage, safely aboard your floating castle?”

“Alexandria isn’t like the others. Her work is for the good of the people.”

The Outsider actually pulls away from her and laughs. It’s dark and sinister and she absolutely hates him for it, because she knows what he’s going to say. 

“Grim Alex has killed more than the rest _combined_. And I’ll let you in on a secret; she could have stopped it much sooner. Enjoy the Clockwork Mansion, Emily Kaldwin.”

A vanishing act complete with a puff of black smoke that fills her face. Emily lets out an exasperated sigh and practically flies across the rooftops with her black magic, stopping here and there for bits and bobs that she can sell, elixirs and rations to bring back to the ship (especially as the population aboard grows). Sometimes she takes paintings and silverware. Oft she had been accused, during her proper reign, that she was stealing from her subjects via taxes. The irony now is insanely captivating, though more often than not the apartments are completely abandoned and riddled with the lingering sense of death. The few abodes that she does steal from that bear signs of life, her Majesty takes care to only nab small amounts. Not enough to decimate one’s finances, she hopes. 

_THE OUTSIDER WALKS AMONG US_. 

On the walls, occasionally, there are bits of graffiti that stand out from the normal outcries of desperation. The little symbol, of hands exchanging goods, that catches her eye is exactly what she needs. A black market. 

The Empress isn’t even sure who outlawed the markets, whether it was Duke Abele or if, perchance, the order came from her office in Dunwall. But now she recognizes these smugglers as a necessary evil. Beneath the grime and stink of the city lies her ticket to facing Jindosh’s contraptions. Rewire tools, stun mines, springrazors. Anything that can destroy circuitry without alerting the entire city as to her presence.

“I can help you out, but not right now,” the woman running the shop mutters. “Don’t even linger here. I’m supposed to get a visit from Paolo, someone you don’t want to meet. Come back later.”

Patience is, admittedly, her biggest weakness. That is, she has none of it. But the look of fear lingers in the eyes of the black market dealer and Emily relents, almost making it to the door when she hears the trademark “howl” that Karnaca’s biggest gang precedes every confrontation with. She breathes in and pushes the metal door open.

Paolo has a grim face. He threatens and insults her, establishing himself as a king of the city’s underworld, and Emily suddenly can’t help it. She imagines Corvo Attano defending her and her mother in the gazebo against Whalers and aims her pistol like he had. It’s not a good idea, and while the Howlers behind him have their swords drawn and ready to go, Paolo stands there with his arms crossed and a knowing look in his eyes. Like he’s prepared for it.

Emily fires three shots. Only two bodies fall to the ground.

“By the Void!” she hisses, as the rats that bloomed where Paolo once stood begin crawling around her feet. 

A horrid scream fills her ears, though it doesn’t come from anyone nearby. It sounds like an older lady, shrieking in fear. It lingers far too long in her head to be any normal tone. She knows... Emily _fucking knows_ that the Outsider has a hand in this business. She slices the rats gnawing at her shoes to pieces and only takes one or two scratches in the process. 

An old beggar gingerly watches her from a dark corner of the alley. 

_KEEP OUT! NO TRESSPASSING!_

Without further ado, Emily turns on her highborn heel and trots back down to the black market hideout. She feels a little bad. Her father had told her stories about his adventures (struggles) during the rat plague, and how Slackjaw had turned out to be a decent man (for a crime syndicate boss). She could have avoided Paolo. Let him conduct his business. Perhaps she went too far. Perhaps she didn’t go far enough. 

She pays the black market saleswoman good money to upgrade her assortment of weapons, even though she strives to just knock guards out most of the time― if not flat out avoid them. With an upgraded crossbow and pistol, Emily doesn’t really have enough money for the rune sitting on the shelf that hums and calls to her. How can the lady running the shop stand that noise all the time? Her hand twitches to just… reach out and take it.

Is she going mad?

“Thank you for your patronage,” the merchant graciously recites. “Remember, you never saw me. I never saw you.”

Emily nods and walks out the door for a second time. Thank goodness it’s summer, and the sun, while out of direct sight, is still giving off a damn impressive amount of light. She has at least two hours before night will fall and it shall be far more difficult to retrieve Sokolov after that.

Quite some time later, she is standing in front of an unconscious Kirin Jindosh. There are scattered bits of clockwork soldiers around his office but he rests in his laboratory. She considers killing him, but knows it won’t solve her problems. Killing him puts dozens out of business and creates a martyr in the process. And, she suspects he participated in the coup _not_ because he disliked the Kaldwin reign, but because there was money to be made of it. Because there was someone willing to look past his expulsion from the Academy of Natural Philosophy and toss him some sympathy (and a great deal of coin).

His house is beautiful, in a way. Where Sokolov had a scientific grip on the world, Kirin Jindosh looks through an additional, artistic lens. As the glass platforms rotate and spin, revealing different stations to his laboratory, Emily wishes that she’d studied engineering and design instead of _Empress-ing_. 

Perhaps she and Meagan and Alexandria and Sokolov can rescue her father and then run away after defeating Delilah. Perhaps she doesn’t restore herself to the throne?

A simple pull of a lever ruins the mind of the genius who invents it, and Emily feels free to walk the halls of the house, moving the walls and floors however she wants. A voice whispers in the back of her head as her hand waves and casts a spell, and she turns into shadow. She crawls past the mechanical soldiers and the real ones, stealing things here and there and knocking out the people who would cause her stress when she escapes with Anton on her back.

The assessment chamber seems to be a sick-minded invention, designed to trap whoever dwells inside with the alluring promise of freedom, only to remove it from ones grasp so suddenly via the use of clever platforms and moving walls. To say nothing of the clockwork soldier inside. 

She places down the stun mine she’d purchased from the black market and waits. 

More pieces of machinery fall to the ground with her success and she effortlessly moves through this glorified rat maze in silence. It is not designed to accommodate someone with magical powers.

What harries her is the immediate image on her left as she enters Sokolov’s quarters. It’s that of Grim Alex. Not Hypatia, not the sweet, frightened doctor whom Emily had rescued. The details are strangely capturing of the statue-like image of the assassin that she had seen in the Void, when the Outsider had first given her powers. A hooded grey cloak, a red scarf, bandages that cover all of her face save for one piercing eye. She did notice the shirt underneath, in this painting, that she remembered finding Alexandria in. 

Did Grim Alex allow Hypatia the dignity of changing clothes? She had found food in Alexandria’s laboratory, and one small cot, but she had looked as though she wasn’t taking care of herself properly. 

“I need to focus. Sokolov,” Emily muttered.

She placed her hands on his shoulder to wake him up, feeling anguish at the gray hair and deep wrinkles on his face. He was no longer the clever debater that she’d loved as a child. His face was bruised and battered on one side, but it still lit up with joy when he recognized her. 

“Emily Kaldwin? If you’re here, things have gone further than I thought. But Kirin Jindosh―”

“Not dead,” she gently whispered, holding his old, freckled hand, “But I used his machines on him. His mind is… not what it was.”

There’s pride in his smile, and it means everything to her. She realizes that, quite frankly, he’s the next best thing to a father right now.

“You were an interesting little girl. You’ve become a fascinating woman.” 

Before Emily can say anything, her former teacher passes out on the mattress in his cell. She lets out a sigh of relief after feeling his pulse and scoops him up in her arms. Strange, how after this coup began, lifting bodies became easier and easier every day. Even with the extra weight on her back, she can sprint like a gazelle. 

_TAXES_

_TAXES_

_TAXES_

_TAXES_

Despite the guards beginning to patrol as they realize something’s amiss, Emily escapes out the Clockwork Mansion without a sound. They ride the carriage back to the neighborhood where she’d confronted Paolo, and she knows something is wrong. 

She leaves Sokolov behind in the carriage for just a moment and uses her Far Reach to make her way to the roof of the station.

Witches.

She knows it without even witnessing them cast magic. They strut among the dead bodies of guards and civilians with an unearned confidence, and wear the exact same clothes as Delilah. Emily uses her own dark powers to silently kill two, but the third catches her in the act.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” the hag shrieks.

A flash of magic slices Emily across her face, from the corner of her nose down to the back of her jaw in a diagonal slash.

The witches uses void magic to teleport around in a similar manner to how her father could, and Emily shudders to see blood (or perhaps ink?) running down from her eyes and nose. Her crossbow automatically knocks a stinging bolt― taken from some ruffians who had tried to ambush her earlier― and she fires straight into the heart of the bitch. There’s a gasp heard from across the street as the witch turns and flees, and Emily sneaks up into the refuge of balconies and rooftops.

This time, she pounces upon this woman and knocks her unconscious.

“What are you?” Emily whispers, patting down her pockets for clues. “And why are you here?” 

She’s young. Truth be told, without the markings (probably not blood) running down her face and arms, she would be quite beautiful. Her hair is in an elaborate setup, and her clothes are very nice― nice enough to see at the Dunwall court. Emily wonders if she’s one of those poor children who runs away from home and pre-arranged marriages only to stumble into the loving arms of a cult like Copperspoons.

Sure enough, she finds a note tucked into a pocket.

_Mariah,_

_Take Heather and Kai. Travel to Karnaca tonight. The others there will give you a roof to sleep beneath and they will keep you out of sight. Watch for our friend from Dunwall._

_When the moment comes, strike. If you succeed, I promise you will be rewarded. And beyond that I’ll make you a portrait._

_Your Empress Forever, Delilah_

It causes a snarl to develop in Emily’s throat. How dare that bitch of an aunt send assassins after her?! Her fist shakes and her vision goes dark and for a moment, just a brief moment, she can _feel_ the Outsider smiling. He wants her to kill this unarmed, unconscious witch at her feet. Her teeth clench and she can feel her heart pounding in her head.

No.

Emily takes in a deep breath, and walks away. She retrieves Sokolov and brings him to Meagan, ignoring the stares of impoverished civilians poking out from dark alleys and steps over the body of the witch on her way down to the canals. Another deep breath.

_THE CROWN KILLER IS WATCHING!_

Meagan gives her a sincere thank you, holding Sokolov close. Emily can still feel a darkness pulsing in her head and heart but offers to drive the skiff back to the Dreadful Wale. Nine. She’s killed only nine. _Only_ nine. 

Emily dreads the moment when she realizes she cannot keep track. 

**Aboard the Dreadful Wale**

She discovers that Delilah can manipulate the Void, regardless of the presence of the Outside. Emily is tugged in and watches in silence as Delilah recounts her side of the story. About how Emily’s grandfather tossed aside one of his daughters and let a kitchen maid die in debtor’s prison. About how Delilah apprenticed for Sokolov and devised plans well before the Outsider marked her. Emily’s not sure if any of it is true, but it is one hell of a sympathy gathering story. Even if Delilah had come to her without magic and grandeur and an army from Serkonos, would Emily have accepted her?

Meagan has left bottles of fine wine in her room, but she’s not so sure she feels like drinking right now. She has missions to complete and scores to settle and she doesn’t want to relax and kick up her feet just yet. Perhaps on the voyage back to Dunwall she might take a moment and not train or plan or fret. That is, if she doesn’t die first.

Emily wanders into Alexandria’s room, not wishing to speak with Meagan and Sokolov just yet. She sits down on the doctor’s cot and listens to the gentle turning of pages as Hypatia reads.

Moments pass.

“Oh! I didn’t even realize you were here! You’re like a cat, your Majesty.” 

“It’s Emily.”

“Yes, of course, sorry ma’am.”

“Emily.”

Alexandria’s features soften, and the Empress begins to notice that she’s looking far healthier with each passing day. She does, indeed, have new changes of clothes and Emily wonders if― despite her constant grumbling about finances― Meagan was the one to sneak into the city and fill a suitcase with outfits from abandoned apartments. She knows that new clothes have been appearing in her own bedroom, new coats and scarves and caps so as to stay as far under the radar as possible. 

The woman opposite her gently shuts her book and scoots closer, taking Emily’s face in her hands. At first, the Empress is hesitant. Her father’s training wishes to kick in and push the assailant away.

But this touch is gentle, examining. A thumb gently traces a cut across her cheek from the witch’s magic.

Alexandria clicks her tongue, “I have something that can help with this. Practical medicine. Where did I put… blood ox liver and leche thistle seeds...”

The room has been, over the past week, filling up with various pieces of medical equipment. Though Addermire still has guards stationed on the island, Meagan and Emily have retrieved what they could from the good doctor’s apartment, as well as what Sokolov could borrow from friends. Admittedly, Emily could have brought back mechanical wonders from Jindosh’s mansion were it not for the complete and utter lockdown in the Aventa neighborhood. 

“I might leave soon,” the doctor sighs, her back turned to Emily. “I’m making a full recovery, and the miners in the Dust District could use my help. Much as I would like to stay here. It’s… it’s somewhat of a risk and...”

“We will not force you to stay,” Emily calmly states. “We are not our enemies.”

Alexandria is silent, working on a paste made from various flowers, spices, and fungi. There are books and stacks of paper in the room alongside the various bottles, and poking out of the various crates she can spot more alchemical reagents. It all looks very scientific and professional until Alexandria pauses and pours a splash of Orbon Rum into the paste.

“That helps with the healing, does it?”

“It numbs the nerves. The Arutad flower can sting, though it speeds the rate that the body mends damaged tissue tenfold.”

“I don’t mind a sting,” Emily defends.

Brown eyes meet hers and flash a warning, a warning that the doctor’s experience and knowledge is not to be challenged.

“I’ve seen grown men, trained Grand Guard at peak physical fitness, pass out from its pain. You’ll want the rum, trust me.”

It promotes something in her. A need to be playful and nip back with a retort. She likes it, and she can’t place why. But before Emily can even open her mouth the alchemist takes a thumbful of the paste from a mortar and spreads it across her cheek, over and into the cut. Instantly the left side of her face goes numb, all the way to her tongue. Emily shoots the doctor a glare until she sees the small folding table that has appeared next to the cot, complete with surgical equipment.

Emily panics, and realizes that she still doesn’t fully trust the doctor. Is she going to get cut up? Has she been drugged so that she can’t fight back? 

Perhaps this was all an elaborate plan for the Crown Killer to―

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Dr. Hypatia exclaims, “I should have told you I was just going to stitch that! Forgive me, your Majesty!”

A pause. Muscles begin to relax. A warm hand rests on her knee.

“Emily,” she mutters through a numb face.

“Emily. May I continue?”

A nod and with that Hypatia instructs her to lay down. The anxiety keeps her heart thumping, but Emily attempts to relax on the bed, keeping as still as possible as the alchemist uses a sterilized wipe to remove the excess medicine before holding Emily’s jaw still with one hand and prepping to stitch up the cut with the other. There is a dull pain in her mouth despite the numbing properties and she begins to acknowledge that Alexandria was probably right about the Arutad flower. 

A footstool appears near her head. Where was the doctor hiding all this furniture?

“I haven’t stitched anyone in a while, I suppose. That’s not me saying I’m rusty just… miners often have lung problems and diseases and I was begged by Pastor and Stilton to prioritize that. There was a time when Vasco and I offered free treatments to the Howlers and the other, smaller gangs― we were practically overrun with surgery requests. Fixing up their cuts and contusions and missing fingers. In exchange… we were given a bounty of alchemical reagents that we didn’t even need to pay for. Those kids, who spent most of their time fighting Overseers in dark alleys, were suddenly more than happy to delve into abandoned apartments for all sorts of hidden mushrooms and creature bits and the like. If it weren’t for that we wouldn’t have found the ingredient that made the Addermire Solution excel; bloodfly venom.” 

Emily remains silent. 

“What I’m meaning to say is… allies and solutions for problems go hand in hand. You… you seemed to solve a problem of mine, and I feel obligated to help you how I can, Lady Emily.”

She can’t help the smile, with the half of her face that isn’t numb, at the word “Lady”. She hadn’t been called that since she stayed with the Loyalists during the rat plague. It almost sounds more natural, more _respectful_ , in comparison to “Empress”. 

“There. The medicine should wear off by tonight, but if you need more to dull the pain I will preserve what I just made. Try not to go swimming in anything on your next mission, or at least don’t submerge your head.”

“I can’t promise that.”

Hypatia sighs, “I know you can’t.”

**The Royal Conservatory**

_APARTMENT SEIZED!_

With delicate fingers, she sets the alarm to ring within the next few seconds and darts to the other room in the apartment. The sleepy Overseer has his night interrupted and lets out a groan, standing up and rubbing his neck as he inspects the clock. She swiftly crosses the room and knocks him out.

“Sorry to disturb you,” she whispers, setting him down in an armchair. “Back to your scripture dreams.” 

Though he’s busy in the Dust District, Vice Overseer Byrne has soldiers watching Ashworth from this outpost. There are ammunitions and receipts from the black market just downstairs; scrap pieces of machinery litter the tables in the apartment. She takes note of the map detailing the interior of the Royal Conservatory and unpins it from the strategy board. 

Curious. Rather curious. Midway through her sprinting across another rooftop, the speakers strewn across the streets reveal the voice of the Duke, in his usual daily address of the city. 

He reveals critical information, whether he knows it or not. Morely and Tivia do not support Delilah’s claim to the throne .

Ideally, she will end this traitorous reign through stealth and with the small amount of friends she’s begun to gather. But, should push come to shove, it may pay to ask Meagan to sail north for a few weeks and speak with the Kings and Queens upstairs. Morely would support her in a heartbeat, though not because she's Emily Kaldwin. They just hate Dunwall, and have been itching to exact revenge for two hundred years' worth of oppression. She doesn’t want a war, not even for the sake of putting her own ass back in the chair in Dunwall Tower. But, she firmly believes Delilah is plotting something more than mere tyranny. 

This time, finally, she’s efficient and cunning and quiet, and no one knows she’s coming. Her footsteps are silent enough to belong to a dancer, and she develops a patience that she jokingly wonders if it was a power blessed from the Outsider. She does not kill people this time. She remembers not to kill. 

_CONDEMNED_ _DUE TO INFESTATION!_

It gets easier. All of this is getting easier and that should worry her but there’s something primal awakening within her. 

This is all a hunt.

Entering the conservatory through the basement, she uses a regular crossbow bolt on a hound and nearly lets out a gasp when the mutt’s body dissipates into thin air, save for the skull. She stares at the hunk of bone on the ground and hears it begin to make a noise. Before anything else happens, she shoots the skull again and that, too, dissipates into thin air.

“What the fuck were they working on in here? What was wrong with normal fucking dogs?” Emily hisses.

She uses her powers to climb up as far as she can before she spots an open window that dumps her directly into Breanna Ashworth’s office. But she doesn’t kill her, not just yet.

Ashworth speaks to a statue of Delilah. This normally wouldn’t be a cause of alarm to Emily, save for the fact that the statue speaks back.

They speak of the Sisters of the Oracular Order, of Kirin Jindosh, and vaguely of Delilah’s plans in Dunwall, but not enough to give the girl any advantage in this war. She lets them finish their conversation and uses her Far Reach to get out of noticeable view. 

She feels like an idiot. Of course Breanna Ashworth of all people would be able to sense the casting of a spell nearby.

“Hmm… it seems rude to die here, whoever you were,” the curator calls out.

Emily hides in the dark shadows beneath a table, up in a makeshift laboratory, yet she hears no footsteps. It’s almost as though Ashworth was challenging her to come down to the office and fight her. Well… that wasn’t going to happen. Emily was going to learn more about this Oraculum. 

Within the laboratory she finds what she needs, lenses that, when attuned to the Oraculum, would sever the witches (including Breanna) to Delilah and her magic. Render them mere humans. 

Emily hopes that it won’t somehow destroy her own connection to the Outsider, but, to be frank, it would be a necessary sacrifice. 

Quietly, using her powers as she needs, she installs the lenses and flips the switch activating the Oraculum. A strange magic fills the air and, for a moment, nothing happens. A witch runs up to the device, not even noticing her, and suddenly falls unconscious. Then another. Then another. Ashworth herself desperately tries to stop the device as runes and sigils light up on the wooden floor. 

“No… no… no… this was all I had!” 

Emily tries to approach Ashworth, who is now kneeling on the ground in despair, unable to cast magic. The museum is now strewn with unconscious bodies of women who will no longer be able to kill innocent civilians using the Void. 

“I’m sorry, but you gave me no choice. This wasn’t the way,” Emily says, resting a hand on Ashworth’s shoulder.

The witch violently shrugs her aside, but makes no attempt to actually harm her. Her eyes are cast to the ground, tears dripping down her face.

“Leave me alone. You’ve ruined me.”

The Empress acknowledges her wish. She ignores the dark tug within her to finish the job and explores the Conservatory for information. No one is there to stop her. She grabs a roseburrow prototype (as requested by the black market dealer, a few whale bone runes, several bloodfly husks for Alexandria to dissect, and finds a fascinating audiograph made by Ashworth about Delilah. Apparently Daud himself destroyed her last time, but some ritual at Aramis Stilton’s home resurrected her three years ago. That’s the clue Emily needs to plan her next steps. 

Returning to the office, Emily decides to have herself a high and mighty moment. She struts up to the statue of Delilah and speaks to it, pistol at the ready.

At first Delilah taunts her.

“It’s done,”’ the younger Kaldwin retorts. “Breanna Ashworth is no longer a witch.”

Stone eyebrows furrow and a fist clenches in anger. She gets the feeling that somewhere in Dunwall, objects are being thrown and smashed. 

“You villain. You don’t even know what you’ve done. A great bloom wilts and fades from the world.”

“Delilah, I will take apart everything you’ve built until I have what’s mine.”

“Oh Breanna… I don’t believe we will speak again… know that I hate you for this, _child_.”

“Well then,” Emily retorts as she aims her pistol at the statue’s forehead and blasts it apart effortlessly, “You shouldn’t have turned my father to stone, bitch.”

She blows out every candle burning in the Royal Conservatory as the witches continues to sleep. With luck, it would still be standing after Emily took back Dunwall, and she could finally bring Wyman here. 

Ashworth sends a glare her way as she steps out the front doors.

**Aboard the Dreadful Wale**

It hurts her, a little. She won’t lie. Seeing Alexandria’s room completely empty, save for some crates with Addermire Solution and other medical supplies donated to the cause, and for a single audiograph. The Empress listens as Alexandria gives her thanks, inspires her about the influence she has over the city and its people, even in this state of subterfuge and espionage. 

Her farewell sounds forced, and Emily doesn’t believe it to be the true message. No… it’s a decoy for Anton and Meagan to listen to.

She searches around the room once more, stumbling across a sealed envelope addressed to “My most recent patient”, tucked away in one of the boxes full of Addermire Solution. Emily uses her father’s sword as a letter opener and finds a single piece of parchment inside. Words are scratched out and it is written in a shaky hand, unlike the fine penmanship she saw in the documents lying around Hypatia’s apartment.

  
  


_Your Imperial Majesty,_

_I imagine you found this because a part of you enjoys adventure and discovery, a part that rules over your training and education as an Empress. The way your face lights up when you’re about to go out on a mission… you get restless aboard the boat, like I do. Meagan and Anton don’t seem to understand that desire for freedom. I know I left without saying anything, and I would have brought it to your attention if we had the time._

_It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for the cause, far from it. If you need anything at all to help further your goals, speak with Lucia Pastor. She shelters me in the Dust District, where I will care for the miners away from the prying eyes of Duke Abele. He’s sent a letter to my apartment at Addermire Station begging me to return to his side― I fear for my safety. A man like that has far more use for someone like Grim Alex than he has for someone like Alexandria Hypatia._

_If it is urgent, I will return to the Dreadful Wale at once. But… I can’t stay there longer than I need to._

_Sokolov’s face betrayed what his manners would not. He acted casually enough around me but I saw the fear in his eyes. I found the audiograph that caught the moment the Crown Killer kidnapped him among the gizmos and gadgets he tinkers with in the war room. Hearing a twisted version of my voice speaking such vile things… how can any of you stand me?_

_You said, when we first talked aboard the Wale, that you would tell me the truth. I am beginning to piece everything together myself. Once I was healthy enough to move out and about, Meagan would send me on errands for food and supplies. I saw the newspapers scattered around the city. I saw the wanted posters. I worry I would have spent the rest of my life as a monster, and Abele would have let me. I’m too scared to go to Addermire… I vaguely remember seeing the blood everywhere when you finally cleared my head. I don’t think I’m ready to see what I reduced the Institute to._

_I’m sorry. I wish I could be of more help to you, Your Royal Highness._

_Good luck,_

_Alexandria_

  
  


She lets out a deep sigh and folds the paper, tucking it into her coat. There were things that Hypatia could have helped her with; beyond just medical expertise. She wanted someone here who was a native to the city, who knew the ins and outs. Meagan and Sokolov had lived here for a few years but Hypatia was Serkonan. Perhaps they would find someone else to help them. 

Sokolov has already suggested Paolo and Overseer Byrne, but Emily doesn’t want to have anything to do with either of them if she can help it. She may very well just side with Byrne to get it over with, knowing damn well that she cannot let a gang rule the city in Abele’s absence. Or she’ll take Paolo into consideration― for years she was the only person in the court who caught the way her father’s mouth twitched whenever the Overseers walked into the room to commence ritual and ceremony. Militarized religion doesn’t thrill her either. 

Emily shakes her head. Stilton is the focus here. The rest is just… necessary calamity. 

**Dust District**

_I BROKE MY BACK IN THE SILVER MINES_

Meagan fucks her when they meet up. It’s not ideal and it’s not right but she needs to get her frustration out and they’re stuck in this stupid fucking apartment anyways until the storm subsides. 

She’s made her way through Batista Overlook, gently taking care of the guards there so that they wouldn’t become a problem later. None of the Grand Guard are willing to go further into the Batista District, the wrath of Howler and Overseer alike a looming threat. Emily knocks them out but places them inside an abandoned apartment so they won’t choke on dust in their sleep. She has a feeling she’ll be doing that a lot in this district. 

Meagan meets her in an apartment that barely has a floor or a ceiling but does have its fair share of dust and debris. They board up the open spaces with what bathroom and closet doors are left, and it’s enough to get in a conversation. There’s a small fire going in what used to be a hearth, and despite the heat outside it’s a welcome feeling. 

The gist of the conversation is the same that Sokolov had given her; the warning that whoever survives the war in the Dust District may very well control Karnaca after Emily kills the Duke. 

Before she can leave to inspect the Jindosh lock, though, a dust storm blows through.

“This should only take one or two minutes before it will clear,” Meagan sighs.

They wait.

They wait.

She can’t stand the rattling of the shutters and ties them together with what scraps of fabric she can find. Meagan scrounges up some water but the taste of silver dust has Emily setting the glass down. Perhaps she’ll come across an unopened bottle of pear soda that she can use to get rid of the dryness in her throat. 

Emily takes a second glance at all of her weapons, to make sure they’re in tip top shape.

Foster spends time drawing up a ground-plan from what she can remember of Stilton’s home.

Ten minutes into the storm, she crosses the threshold and kisses the Captain of the Dreadful Wale. She hasn’t had a moment to even think about intimacy since long before the coup, back when Wyman departed for Morely months ago. The response is two fold; first Meagan blinks in surprise at her with her mouth slightly agape. Then, there’s a deep sigh, and the older woman kisses her back.

She’s not sure what this brings out in her, but she _needs_ it. The whimper in the back of Foster’s throat gives her the relief of knowing she’s not the only one. 

Skin on skin. 

A lingering touch over an old scar. 

A kiss just beneath and behind an ear. 

The gentle repeats of “Is this alright?” or “Tell me what you need” fills the air between their mouths.

All in all, it’s a quick experience. Not in an _unpleasant_ way, they just both have more important things to do, and they’re both finished by the time the storm subsides. They don’t kiss each other once the shutters stop their cacophonous rampage, and Meagan doesn’t make eye contact with her as they shrug coats back on. There is a linger, from both of them, in the living room of this abandoned apartment, that lasts for just a moment. Emily becomes aware of the dust she’s breathing in and pulls her scarf above her mouth and nose. When she’s ready to go, weapons and tools accounted for, she realizes that Foster is nowhere to be found.

_I’m sure she’s just gone back to check on Sokolov_ , the Empress thinks. _I won’t dwell on it._

She feels emptier from it.

At any rate, it’s easy enough to clear out the offices of the Overseers and the bar wherein Howlers dwell. Emily knows that the advice the other two gave her is sound, that she could just deliver a dead body from one faction to the other and be granted free reign of the Dust District… but she doesn’t prefer either alternative. 

_BOSSES BEWARE! WHEN WE’RE SCREWED WE MULTIPLY!_

  
  


Lucia Pastor gives her a weary look as she walks out of the black market, and Emily knows from that single look that it ought to be the families and workers in charge of this region. 

Durante, whoever that was, has been left instructions to ship someone in and out of the clutches of a mining company via the Silvergraph studio. He also had the code to Jindosh’s mansion within his office… and if she so desired she could simply enter the mansion and let the city sort itself out. But she can’t just do that. She has to intervene.

Emily knocks out Paolo first, and of course he turns into a pile of _rats_ . She knocks him out a second time and crushes the mummified hand in his pocket. Within Paolo’s office is a painting of a noblewoman from Dunwall, a vaguely familiar noblewoman. Corvo had been reluctant to tell her of the darker sides of his adventures during the Rat Plague but when it became apparent that someone could assault the palace using dark magic, he recounted the story of Granny Rags to her. Or, as the history books knew her… Vera Moray. That she couldn’t be killed unless a cameo of hers was destroyed, and Corvo had done just that to save Slackjaw all those years ago. Paolo had found her hand, and was somewhat immortal because of it. Fucking dark magic. She should have turned down the Outsider’s offer. Hell, what if some kid thirty years from now cut off _her_ hand and used it to terrorize an entire city?!

_PAY WHAT YOU OWE_

Needless to say, Liam Byrne is kind enough to _not_ turn into rats when she came for him.

Hopefully, there will be a sense of peace among this area of the city for a while, with these two factions neutralized. Or, neutralized as best as she can on her own. Whoever she has replacing Abele will be expected to sort both of these messes out.  
  


Emily understands the need for a criminal underbelly. The energy that can keep an economy going where government cannot. And, of course, there will always be some need for religion in any given society. People need empathetic explanations beyond what Natural Philosophy can provide. But both must be controlled, else these bloody wars happen on people’s doorsteps.

_A BOTTLE OF ORBON RUM FOR EACH OVERSEER MASK!_

She gathers what she can from the kitchens of the Overseers and the Crone’s Hand Saloon and brings it to Lucia Pastor, who doesn’t say much in the way of thanks. Emily almost wonders if this woman knows exactly who she is. The fresh fruit tumbles into bins and the perfectly sealed bottles of pear soda and gristol cider stack onto the shelves above Pastor’s makeshift stove. 

“When these people awake, they might try to take this food back. Don’t let them suspect you have it. Hide if you must,” the Empress instructs.

Pastor’s brow furrows, but she nods, “I’m particularly good at hiding things, but you already know that.”

Of course. Hypatia had mentioned Lucia Pastor in her letter to Emily. Without a doubt this woman knew the masked assailant’s true identity… but she wouldn’t disrupt Pastor’s routine of feeding these emancipated civilians, not even for the chance to speak with Hypatia. A reunion would have to wait. 

_WANTED_

_HOWLERS_

_CITIZENS OF KARNACA, THE HOWLERS ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS_

**A Crack in the Slab**

The moment Emily walks in she can feel it. No magic can be cast here. At least she has plenty of tools, already prepped with both her pistol and her sleep darts. She will do her best not to kill Stilton, but she can’t promise the same for any random intruders. 

Aramis Stilton must have had a nice home, once. As nice as Boyle Manor. But the sheer amount of dust built into full on dunes inside the place is enough to make her wonder how anyone could survive inside here. Shattered glass and boarded up windows… how can a place look like this in only three years?

Then again, Dunwall looked worse in only six months of plague.

Electricity still lights some of the bulbs within various hallways and rooms. That’s a good sign. Perhaps the place can still be fixed up?

Emily is being too optimistic, she knows. Meagan would scold her if she were here.

Furniture is dramatically overturned and rats dart here and there. Between the metal bars of once tall doors, she can spot more bloodfly nests than she’s comfortable with, and nest keepers shuffling here and there like weepers. Aramis Stilton can be heard muttering to himself about utter nonsense. It feels like a ghost story, perhaps just the prologue. There’s so much more to the story, and she needs to learn as much as she can.

Then, the most amazing thing happens.

Or rather, that’s what it will say in the history books years from now. The truth is that she’s surprised and feels like a moron for not expecting it. Of course **_he_ **would show up.

He stops time. He tells her about a specific day three years ago. He gives her another device, just like the Heart of a Living Thing. He calls it a Timepiece, and she suddenly realizes that the Outsider’s magic is so much more than little tricks and trinkets to bypass guards. The insect-like wings of the device fold up and Emily gazes through them. She can see a different version of the manor… a clean, elegant version. 

She squeezes the device, and travels through time. 

It feels completely different from the Heart. Almost… as though it were designed by a Karnacan, the way the Heart looks vaguely designed by someone from Dunwall. Piero had once mentioned being visited by a strange entity in his dreams and being asked to invent something… had the Outsider done the same to Jindosh?

Emily wouldn’t put it past him, but as she uses the device to dart between the past and present to she traverse Stilton’s home… she’s somewhat grateful. Somewhat. 

Kitchens, dining rooms, bedrooms, hallways. She zips back and forth between three years past and present day Karnaca. It’s ingenious and, truth be told, delightful. No person will ever dare to believe her should she tell this tale… except maybe her father. He knows of the fascinating horrors and machinations of the Void and its denizens. 

A part of her wants to take this device and use it to stop her mother from dying.

But Emily Kaldwin knows without certainty that the Outsider will prevent her from doing that. Perhaps the Timepiece is only tied to this manor. Perhaps it can only go to this date and time. Perhaps the Outsider doesn’t want to mess with events that colossal to the fate of the Empire and the Isles. She doesn’t blame him. Her mother is long gone, and a little device in the palm of her hand can’t bring her back. It would have happened by now if it could. 

But maybe this Timepiece can bring back Aramis Stilton. The Outsider seems willing to play with his fate. 

It is rather nice to be in a place not completely demolished by Duke Abele’s doing (in the past, that is). Stilton lived a comfortable life, but he treated his staff and guard with fairness and equality. She can see that as she blinks between time, and thus she tries to do the same. To the best of her ability, no one here will perish by her blade or bullet.

(Truth be told, the Timepiece makes it easier to do so than the other missions she’s been on so far.)

She wonders what Addermire looks like right now. Is it desolate? Or are patients still coming and going? This would have been right around the time Alexandria tested the serum on herself. 

That’s the one thing she would change. Aramis Stilton made the choice to rub shoulders with Abele, if anything. Not that he deserved this fate of madness by any stretch, but he should have known better than to host a seance. Hypatia was only trying to help people with her serum.

Between killing bloodfly nests and wolfhounds in the present, and knocking out guards and servents in the past, she’s beginning to run low on supplies. Emily makes her way to the back yard, only to find Stilton nervously pacing in a gazebo. 

“I’m sorry about this,” she whispers. “But it’s for your own good.”

She knocks him out and travels to the present before anyone can spot her, only to find that… Stilton Manor is in perfect shape.

Well, decent shape. Some work could be done, but it’s evident that people are still employed and active… and they all have tired smiles on their faces as they whisper about what ought to be done for Mr. Amaris’ dinner and busy schedule. 

To be honest… Emily’s taken aback. An entire building just… full of people when it shouldn’t be. When it was run down and decaying just moments before. It was all relative to her, of course, but it felt like she was exploring a third world now. 

Greenery fills the halls in a different manner than before. Where it was wild and overgrown and encroaching on the walls and ceilings and floors of the manor, now it is controlled but appreciated. Guided. Emily plucks a flower to give to Meagan later out of a planter in the silvergraph room. Caught up in the wonder and delight of how she’s changed Karnaca for the better, Emily nearly forgets that she’s here to learn about the seance. 

The combination rotates to four-seven-zero and she slips through the doors before the veteran guards can even notice. 

It’s terrifying inside. Not because she’s in any immediate danger, but because the past and present seem to collide here; glitching and twitching like a Wall of Light. She worries that the denizens within will spot her, but they too seem to be caught between the worlds. 

“It’s time to begin!” Abele’s ostentatious voice booms from down the corridor. “Where is Stilton? I should never have kept him on just because he and my father were… close.”

Emily rounds the corner to find four humans, or images of humans. Breanna Ashworth, Duke Abele, Kirin Jindosh… and of course, Grim Alex. Emily tries not to tune out what they’re saying, yet finds herself drawing closer and closer until she’s face to face with the Crown Killer, studying it― _her_. Though the images of these conspirators are black and white… Emily still feels the gaze of yellow eyes upon her.

“... it’s beyond my understanding and certainly beyond yours,” Ashworth continues. 

At least they can’t see her. Emily wants nothing more than to end them with her pistol, here and now, and prevent this entire coup from happening… but she knows that, just as they cannot interact with her, she cannot bring harm upon them. Besides, most of the phantom people in this room have already been dealt with… by somewhat humane means. 

Jindosh raises his glass into the air, “This defies rational understanding! It’s the frayed edge where Natural Philosophy crosses over into… something else.”

“Yes,” Grim Alex snarls. “I can feel it. We risk _madness_.”

_That’s a lot coming from you, Crown Killer._

“All of you! Delilah is your rightful Empress! You owe her this!”

Ashworth nods at Abele with a forced smile, “Delilah’s stronger than before. The Duke and I have heard her voice, whispering to us. And now it’s time, so take your positions.”

They fade away, as though they’ve disintegrated into dust. Emily follows the voices down into the proper room of the seance, knowing what’s going to happen before the Void even shows it to her. Blue runes coating the walls light up and fizzle out as the building struggles to remember if it is 1849 or 1852. 

Four people, rather than five, stand around the circle with their arms outstretched, casting occult magic to bring forth a new heir to the Kaldwin throne. 

“You can feel her power, can’t you?” Ashworth chuckles. 

Delilah rises from a pool of magic in the ground, tethered to this plane and to the Void by an effigy of some kind. 

“My spirit is safe now, inside this thing. Luca, you must lock it away,” Delilah mutters, as she is tended to by the Duke.

Funny, it’s the kindest Emily has ever seen him, his brow knit into worry as he helps her up. She wonders just how strong his loyalty is to her. But Delilah’s eyes are trained on Ashworth, who Emily had only realized a few days after she’d gone to the Conservatory… _was_ her lover. Just as Breanna reaches out to hold the resurrected witch’s hand, Delilah pauses.

“Wait.”

A clock ticks away somewhere in the room, but no one moves a muscle. Then, Delilah turns to face Emily, staring right into her eyes. 

“You are hidden,” Delilah smirks. “But I know who you are, I know when you are. You’ve come to watch me return.”

Emily stiffens, though she knows she’s in no harm, “That I have, aunt.”

The illusion doesn’t hear her, and continues, “And someday… I’ll come for you.”

The five of them fade away, though the room continues to flicker. Emily lets out a deep breath and flees up the stairs, using the Timepiece to traverse to 1852. To a remodeled and safe Stilton Manor. 

_The Void beyond the world is strange,_ she thinks. _I won’t ever understand all that I’ve seen._

He has his word with her, of course, just as she leaves Stilton Manor. Her hand is on a doorknob one second, and then the next she’s tumbling through the Void, about to scream her lungs out. The Outsider gently catches her by the wrist as though she’s a leaf falling from a tree, and not one hundred and sixty pounds of muscle. He gives her a smirk.

“This is the crumbling island in the Void where they cut out my throat four-thousand years ago. I thought I’d give you a tour.”

“It feels older than the rest,” Emily murmers.

He vanishes in a puff of black smoke and reappears atop a spire of black rock, “It’s more powerful, too. She found this place, the island in the Void where I became what I am.”

“Delilah?”

“It changed her, and she discovered a way to draw from it, tapping into the power here. Delilah is a part of me now…”

A puff of black smoke, and he was suddenly in her face, his lifeless eyes gazing into hers with a frown. It was different, seeing him angry. It wasn’t that he was threatening Emily, per se, but there was an air of blame in his voice. 

“I don’t like it,” he spat. 

“Well, I certainly am trying to fix―”

He vanishes away again, before Emily can finish her statement. She pulls open her coat and places the Timepiece on the ground, knowing he will either hold onto it or destroy it. 

“Thank you for letting me save Stilton. You’ve done something good for the people of Karnaca, you know,” she calls out. “I know you like to meddle here and there with powers and trinkets, but this time you were better than the rumors _they_ hold you to. Thank you.”

There’s a light breeze through the Void, and the abyss feels a little less dark, if just for a moment. 

The Dust District is now just… the Batista District. It’s cleaner here, now that Stilton is still actively controlling the mines and making sure that the silver isn’t pumped out of the hills at breakneck speed. It’s… healthier. The abandoned apartment that she… strategized with Meagan is instead a functioning office with Lucia Pastor typing up new flyers for unionizing the workers. 

People sit in the streets with bottles of water instead of cowering away from the dust storms. There’s a bright, vibrant blue sky and a warm sun that makes her want to spend a day sunbathing aboard the Wale. The Wall of Light never existed, and the Grand Guard have no need to patrol these streets. 

But the biggest change is… is her captain. 

“Sorry I couldn’t take you to see Stilton myself,” Meagan smiles, smoking on a cigar with her… right hand. “But I guess you found the place.”

Emily’s brow furrows, “I… um… yeah. Your advice about Paolo and Byrne was spot on, the Howlers had the code to the Jindosh lock.”

“Code? Lock? I don’t remember giving you advice― you actually went to the Crone’s Hand without backup? Anton, did you put her up to this?”

Did they not remember the mission? Emily stares into Fosters’s two healthy, whole eyes (that’s going to take some getting used to) with confusion, but she’s only met with confusion from the mysterious captain herself. Did Meagan not remember… It was probably for the best. That time and place, wherein the two of them acted inappropriately and with misguided lust, is gone; it now floats somewhere in the Void. Hopefully the Outsider would keep his damn mouth shut about it.

Maybe it’s the dim light of the tunnel, but Meagan looks so much younger. Her face shines and smiles, and she doesn’t look nearly as tired as she has for the past month. 

**Aboard the Dreadful Wale**

_My Emily!_

_Your courier is only giving me scant minutes to write back before he leaves for your secret location. I’m in tears that he won’t give me the location or take me along, but I trust you. I don’t know if it’s fair to be angry with you, or if I should instead cry tears of joy knowing you’re still alive._

_It seems that Morley is on the verge of going to war against Gristol, and the rumors from Dunwal are grim and strange. We’ve heard about soldiers made of metal, women commanding the trees, and whales gathering in the harbor, singing their songs in reverse. I hate the whole world for being between you and me while we should be holding hands. Please be safe or I won’t know what to do._

_Wyman._

The next few days are full of serious planning and training. Meagan is relentless, brawling and sparring with the Empress from dawn to noon, with a quick break for lunch, then testing her climbing from afternoon to dusk. The evenings are the only moments Emily seems to get to herself; piloting the skiff to the Campo Seta Dockyards to sell items and buy food and ammunitions. 

“Did you get a whetstone while you were in town? Just because the blade collapses doesn’t mean you can neglect―”

“Oh leave her alone,” Sokolov grumbles. “She doesn’t kill anyone with it anyways.”

He finishes modifying Emily’s pistol for her as Meagan huffs and resets the dummies. The smell of dinner wafts up from the pipes and hatches and it takes everything not to drop her weapons and grab a bowl of Stilton’s stew. 

She never expected a guy with a manor like that to know how to cook, but he had built his empire out of nothing. He remembers dwelling in an apartment with six other siblings and a beaten down father. His food is all generational recipes. Emily can’t say the same about herself.

Foster relents and allows her to leave. Not that the older woman could truly control the Empress, but there is a schedule set in place, and it pisses the captain off when they go astray from their timetable. If Emily has to fire another fucking crossbow bolt, though, she’s going to jump into the ocean.

“Can you chop vegetables for me?” Stilton politely asks. 

Emily snatches a bite-sized piece of bread off of the counter and pops it into her mouth before working. It’s tangy and going slightly stale but she really doesn’t have the energy to be picky. They cook together in silence... there’s something between them that she can’t place her finger on. A knowing look in his eye, as though he’s aware of what she did. Logically, he ought to have no idea. His manor is functional, full of staff, the mines operating as though he never left; and he never saw the seance’s success. 

But he’s aware of something. 

“Abele was always a brat. There was nothing that could be done about that,” Stilton sighs. “I was hoping we’d have another decade of Theo before the city spiralled into this chaos, but we weren’t so lucky.”

“You were close to the former Duke?”

“Close is… a light word. But probably the most appropriate word.” 

She hands him a plate of chopped carrots. The smell of Serkonan spices fills the air and the bubbles of heated broth drown out the silence. Emily thinks about another life, where Jessamine was the daughter of the kitchen maid instead. She wonders if Delilah has any children, given that she’s older than Jessamine would be. 

Perhaps a sarcastic witch practicing magic among the coven? Or a young boy studying Natural Philosophy in the fortified halls of the Academy?

Or maybe a teenager, warming their hands against a trashcan fire somewhere in the dark alleys across the water.

Emily hands Stilton a bowl of chopped Tyvian onions. The silence suits them both, for people who have to do a lot of public speaking. He sits on a stool and pushes open a hatch to let the steam escape the kitchen, and the sunset pokes through the hull of the Dreadful Wale.

“I wish I had more of a spine, like Paolo. I doubt the man truly cared for the people but he sure fought on their behalf against the like of the Grand Guard and the Overseers.”

“I don’t need a killer sitting at the table with the new leadership of Karnaca. I need… I don’t know what I need. Clearly what I had allowed brought ruin upon the city.”

“You are the Empress, yes, but you had placed good faith in Theodanis to establish an heir that would responsibly care for the city. It was on him to train his son, not you. Theodanis did not have the early death of an assassin’s blade to excuse him from properly planning the next ruler of Serkonos.”

There is a mistiness in Stilton’s eyes, but he sits tall and proud with his words. Emily leans against the counter, nearly burning herself on hot metal, and contemplates his message for a moment, afore returning the knife to the sink and leaving the kitchen. 

A light shines across the water for a second, just as she begins to light a cigarette at the stern of the ship, coming from the Dust District. Emily sets the lighter back in her pocket and pulls out her spyglass, scanning the waves. A few minutes later she spots it; a skiff bouncing through the water as it speeds towards the Wale.

She could use a rifle. It’s an infantryman weapon, sure, but it carries a shot further than a simple pistol. 

But the Empress doesn’t alert her companions. This is not an assailant. 

Lucia Pastor gently pulls the skiff up parallel to the hull of the boat, impatiently waiting for Emily to toss down a line to secure them. She doesn’t look nearly as tired as the woman the Empress first met down in the hidden passages of the Batista borough, serving soup to weary miners. This woman has a bit more shine in her eyes. Flare in her temper.

Her company gives a warmer smile 

“I didn’t know you were coming!” Emily calls down with a laugh. “I would have dressed for the occasion!”

The blush on Dr. Hypatia’s cheeks can be seen all the way from the deck, though it fades fairly quickly. Both women climb aboard, eager to speak with the rest of the Dreadful Wale’s merry little band. Sokolov finds Alexandria agreeable, of course, and they launch into the latest S&J formula as Stilton embraces a grumpy Pastor with a kind hug. Emily is quick to notice Meagan hovering back in the shadows as she inspects the skiff for traps and tricks.

“They’re not here to kill us,” the Empress sighs.

“One can never be too sure.”

Sokolov gathers everyone around a makeshift table, full of various dishes and bottles of wine. Emily wonders if, for some of the people here, it’s one of the most luxurious meals they’ve had this year. She wonders if they think _she’s_ unimpressed with fish and vegetable stew and slightly stale bread― that couldn’t be further from the truth. Emily piles her plate high and pours everyone’s glasses for them with a laugh. Everyone’s spirits soon lift despite Sokolov attempting to steer the conversation towards the Duke’s Palace. 

There is a map, a floor plan of the place. It’s more of a manor than a palace; far more luxurious than Dunwall Tower. 

“Are you ready for this?” Meagan asks, her right arm casually supporting her as she leans against the railing of the ship.

(Emily’s still not used to it.)

“I’ve been inside a dozen castles and a hundred mansions, and they’re the same everywhere. The Duke’s palace can’t be anything worse than Lady Brisby’s social afternoons.”

Stilton smirked at her from the dining table, “Getting inside may not be the hard part.” 

“Abele and his staff will likely be drunk and asleep, even if it’s light out,” Pastor nodded.

Emily’s eyes met Hypatia’s. She wanted to ask if the doctor remembered anything that could help her, but she knew that the poor woman would be mortified to be outed as the Crown Killer, even among peaceful friends. She would ask later.

“Taking down Luca Abele is only part of the puzzle. You also have got to find whatever it is he’s keeping for Delilah.”

Sokolov passed a plate of Serkonan grapes, “Emily, you were cryptic about what you gleaned from visiting the Dust District, which is fine. The world is better with a hint of mystery.” 

_An awful lot happened in the Dust District._

“I will be looking for a vault of sorts. Within will be an effigy I can use to, hopefully, restore Delilah’s spirit to her body.”

All around the table, except perhaps for Meagan, her friends give her looks ranging from confused to mortified. There is a glint of recognition in Alexandria’s eyes, if only for a second. Pastor nearly chokes on her drink.

“By the Seven Strictures, I knew the woman was bad but I didn’t think… dark magic... it explains what I’ve heard about the Conservatory. Hell, it explains what I’ve heard about Paolo!”

Amaris continues despite the revelation, “I know something that may be of use to you. There’s a hidden lever in the pantry of the palace that opens a passage to the Duke’s Vault. If he’s keeping anything precious for Delilah, I suspect that’s where it will be. Beyond that, good hunting.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Emily says, nervously fiddling with the collar on her coat. “I know things in Karnaca are… fragile. I’ve got a lot to think about when this is done.”

Pastor and Foster seem to give her a reproachful look. There is… a lack of forgiveness in their eyes. But Sokolov and Stilton raise their cups to the promise with the smiles of two grizzled old men who have seen enough leaders come and go long enough to know that Emily wasn’t full of hot air. Hypatia. Hypatia just looks pleased and grateful. And in some awe. 

The mood of the table gradually shifts from talk of assassination to plans for the city once the Duke is removed. She knows that that’s the real reason the others have arrived; not for talk of blade and bullets but dispersion of food and medicine, and rights for the workers. Rebuilding of infrastructure, housing in particular. Clearing out the dust from the silver mines. Making sure everyone had access to running water. Extermination of bloodflies. 

“Perhaps Anton could help us develop some sort of clothing or armor to aid those hired to clear out evicted apartments?” Hypatia suggests.

The elderly Tivian lets out a grumble and shifts in his seat.

“I will be returning with Captain Foster and Lady Emily once the Duke has been assassinated. However… I know of a few graduates from the Academy who have settled in Cullero and Saggunto that may be willing to make their way down. You, Hypatia, would have had to take some engineering classes during your Academy days. Couldn’t you invent it?”

“I think I’m done inventing things for a little while. Besides, that was an awful long time ago. 1838. I don’t think I remember anything other than the medical studies.”

“The year after the end of the Lord Regent’s reign. A lot happened around that time,” Meagan muttered into her cup.

For a moment, there is a definitive silence between the (former) Dunwall citizens and the Karnacans. Perhaps out of respect. Then, Pastor lets her empty bowl clatter onto the makeshift table and stands.

“We’re here to give you a ride home, Amaris. When you’re ready to leave, just let me know.”

Gradually, they begin to disperse and prep for other business. Emily retreats to her room to gather her weapons and tools, grabbing as many elixirs as she can.

A knock on the door breaks her away from the letter from Wyman, her fourth time reading it.

“I’m sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to… well… did you need me to look at any wounds? Before you go sprinting into another fight?”

Hypatia is meekly standing in the doorway, her arms crossed and her expression scared. As though she has anxiety about speaking to Emily. Like a gazelle that has just been caught by wolfhounds. Emily crosses her bedroom and gently takes the hands of the woman, bringing her down to the bed where they both sit for a moment in silence. 

“No. I haven’t really been in any fights recently.”

“Falls from high places?”

It got Emily to smile, looking away towards the floor, “No. No, I’ve been okay. A little dust in the lungs from my most recent trip but nothing the Addermire Solution couldn’t handle.”

“Ah. Good! That’s… that’s good! An Empress should always be in the best of health.”

Hypatia doesn’t say anything after that, but checks Emily’s stitches anyways, nearly healed and seemingly uninfected. She gives Emily a few more vials of Addermire Solution for her upcoming mission, the blue liquid almost glowing as it sloshes around in the glass. 

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you in good health, Doctor?”

Hypatia stares at the broken whalebone sword Emily had brought back from the Royal Conservatory. 

“I think so. I don’t know that… she… is fully gone. Dormant. It will take years to fix this. But I do have access to creating more of Vasco’s counterserum, thanks to you. Master Stilton has been kind enough to donate a wing of his manor to making a laboratory that can counter the poor health of the miners; and when I have a rare moment of free time I do my best to replicate what I can of Vasco’s brilliance.”

“His death wasn’t your fault.”

“I know that, but there will always be some semblance of guilt. I can honor his memory by healing the citizens of Karnaca, to the best of my ability.”

“One woman against the world?”

Alexandria finally throws her a smile, a sly grin that reminds Emily of children who can get away with mischief _because_ their parents assume they’re goody goody. It’s playful and young and for a moment they aren’t on the Dreadful Wale.

“Two women against the world, your highness. And once I can restore Addermire to its former glory, I won’t be the only doctor in Karnaca, I assure you.”

“You’ll redecorate the place I hope,” Emily teases.

“What was wrong with bloodfly nests and flooded basements? They complete the look.”

Sokolov gives Meagan a teasing look as she grumbles about the Empress wasting her time; the laughter ringing through the hull and wooden deck so jovial that even the whales could hear it. 

**The Grand Palace**

_KARNACA FOOD TICKET PROGRAM_

_(CANCELLED)_

She was wondering if this district would look nicer than the others, but it’s just as run down. Between the twilight lighting, the automatic watchtower searching for intruders, and the campfires from local gamblers, she has to look a little harder for shadows to hide in. 

Guilt runs through her already heavy heart. This is all her doing.

Of course, the Outsider and Meagan both jump on the opportunity to remind her of this. The god teases her. The captain scolds her. But there’s an expectation in both their messages; that if Emily wants to fix this, she has the opportunity to do so now. And should she ignore this city after the coup, it will only fall into ruin once more. 

Meagan has good reason to push her, of course. Emily had found the audiograph on the ship, and though she should have respected her captain’s privacy, she listened to the recording anyways. A kid, murdered in the street by Luca’s brother. No wonder Meagan Foster absolutely hated royalty. Deidre was one of thousands of people who met an untimely demise at the hands of people who lived in palaces.

When she’d docked at the drop off point, Foster had threatened to kill the Duke if Emily didn’t. Though she’d been trying her best not to project lethal force, this time the young Kaldwin knew that she had to. For Meagan, and for Deidre. 

Even if that moment in the Dust District wasn’t real to Meagan, _this_ Meagan, Emily still felt a loyalty, a fondness for her. If this was the debt to be paid for how the older woman had helped her these past six or seven weeks, killing the Duke would only be the first payment. She would do whatever was needed or asked of her.

_THE ROSEBURROW COLLECTION_

_(CANCELLED)_

Emily thinks about Wyman’s letter, now that she has a moment to herself. They really seem to want the best for her, but how can she go back to the way things were before? Playing around and ignoring responsibility? 

Wyman has an air of innocence about them, which is surprising considering Morely is a tough land to grow up in. Between the Olaskir Dynasty’s hand in squandering rebellions and the cold northern weather, most people from Morley are hardy folk. Not Wyman. 

(Emily uses her Far Reach to pull herself across the streets, over the heads of unsuspecting guards.)

The thing about Wyman is that they… they’re a great candidate for marriage. Legally, the Empress can marry whoever so she desires, as part of an effort to reduce inbreeding among nobles. But, there is an expectation that an Empress would marry a member of the higher classes. And Wyman was just that. Charming and fun and delightful and nothing like the stink of their parent’s money. Contrary, Wyman often found time to donate to local conservation efforts and charity groups in Morely and in Dunwall. 

And even if Emily weren’t an Empress and Wyman wasn’t a noble they would probably have still ended up together. Definitely. If Emily weren’t the fucking Empress she could be at home by the fire _right now_ enjoying King Street Brandy that she swiped off of some shop counter, waiting for Wyman to come home from the docks. 

_KARNACA BLOODFLY CONTROL EDICT_

_(CANCELLED)_

(Emily has disabled the Wall of Light, and she probably has three minutes before one of the guards from the street gets frustrated and comes to check on the power.)

But she doesn't want to get married. That’s the problem! Her mother was murdered by a group of assassins fifteen years ago and her father is currently a stone statue in her throne room, probably mocked and danced around by witches every day. Emily is scared to have anyone else close to her, especially publicly so. It’s just so fucking dangerous! People know who Wyman is, their parents control a huge section of textile trade in the Isles. Void, what if the letter is forged and someone has captured― 

No. No. The letter was real. 

This is stupid. She always loses focus. There’s more important things to think about right now than getting married and having kids.

She goes around clearing and exploring the neighborhood. Rotten food here, notes and diaries there. It’s good that Meagan spent so much time training her after the Dust District, because at one point her foot slips and she tumbles off of the disabled watchtower, causing a lot of calamity and alerting no less than three guards. She doesn’t kill them, but knocks them out as she fights. This is good. She wants the Duke to know she’s coming. Wants him to save her a seat.

She walks through the Wall of Light, and tightens her grip on her father’s sword. This is the first time she’s ever _intended_ to use it. 

_BY ORDER OF THE GRAND SERKONAN GUARD_

_CHECKPOINT ENFORCED!_

_LETHAL FORCE AUTHORIZED_

  
  


The Grand Palace is… something. She couldn’t give a shit about its owner but whoever designed it was an artistic genius. Perhaps it’s the time of the day but the twilight colors bouncing off the white walls and tan wood just… relaxes her. Perhaps that’s the point. She crosses the bridge (the electricity turned off) and climbs up onto the roof of the station to begin scouting.

_“Delilah… her soul is familiar to me.”_

Emily’s jaw drops at her mother’s voice, and she scrambles to summon the Heart. No words follow. The Heart flickers back into black smoke, as though she’s depositing and withdrawing it from the Void like a bank account balance. She’s glad she doesn’t have to carry it around all the time. It creeps her out. 

It’s always hard to accept tough truth. If Jessamine knew Delilah, she likely was telling the truth about being family. 

_“I’ll let you in on a secret,”_ the Outsider had said, all those weeks ago. _“She’s got her eyes on a much greater prize.”_

Emily shakes her head and returns to her spyglass, pinpointing the routes of each guard member. Or rather, the ones _not_ sleeping off the most recent festivities. There aren’t many guards on duty, truth be told. 

Duke Luca Abele really has no idea she’s coming. 

And of course, after creeping along the mansion rooftop for less than a minute, she finds him perched upon the throne room. She knocks out the two elite guards protecting him, and before he can call for help her sword is through his chest. His eyes are in complete and utter shock, and she almost feels sorry for―

The unlit cigarette dangling from between his fingers falls to the floor and stands out against the grains of polished wood. 

“Fuck. Oh fuck!”

She’s killed the body double. Thankfully, no one heard, and she quickly ducks out of the way of the arc pylon before it can detect that someone unattuned to it is in the throne room. The panel covering the whale oil tank is easy enough to pry open and she removes the fuel source before she gets fried to a crisp. 

His body is still on the throne, bleeding out and soaking into the velvet. She picks him up and moves him and the unconscious guards towards the rooftops, where she can hide them without anyone calling for a manhunt (not just yet). 

The consequences of her actions always seem to weigh at the most inopportune moments. The scales are anything but silent. 

“I’m sorry. You did your job well. Too well,” she whispers, as she sets the bloodstained body down in a patch of rooftop flowers.

Eventually, she finds a note detailing the Duke’s schedule, that he is to spend the evening in his quarters. What a fucking idiot she is! All she had to do was find a paper pinned to the wall and she could have avoided an innocent man’s death! And she couldn’t even manage that!

The bedroom is easy enough to find. A guard gets knocked out. A door gets knocked down (no one hears it, thankfully). She uses her magic to hide in the rafters. Watching him. Waiting for the right moment.

“Never ending paperwork. What’s the point of being my father’s son if I have to slave away like this.”

She was like that. When she was the Empress.

At least she can guarantee it’s the right one. Nevertheless, she knocks him down and slits his throat. He clutches it, drowning on the ground, as she bounds down the stairs to disable yet another alarm. 

This is the one kill she doesn’t feel bad about. 

Nothing in the palace changes. People continue to snore, and musicians continue to play. They will find his body in the morning. They might not. The fruit continues to rot on the tables, far too much food here for the amount of mouths. A Clockwork Soldier falls prey to a stun mine. A rich civilian falls prey to one too many gristol ciders. 

It’s easy enough to get into the vault. She disables every single defensive gadget that the Duke lazily relied on and found the entrance just waiting for her. Another Clockwork Soldier is disabled by a springrazor, and she finds the broken wooden gazelle sitting on a shelf.

“Grudges are hard to let go of, aren’t they, Luca?”

The vault is filled with an ostentatious amount of gold, some books (that she assumed belonged to Theodanis), and of course the effigy of Delilah. 

When she approaches it, her mother appears before her. Emily can’t fight the tears, she doesn’t want to. In order to stop Delilah, she must destroy her mother’s spirit. 

“I don’t know how I can do this. You were all I ever wanted,” she sighs, as the ghost of her mother floats down to her face. 

She reaches out and her hand floats through emptiness. 

“I stayed as long as I could,” her mother whispers. “Trying to guide you. The world is better for your influence.”

When Emily tries again to reach out to her mother, she feels a hand hold her own. For just a moment. It’s everything.

“Be at peace, mother. I will try to honor you, always.”

“I love you, and this is the final thought I carry into nothingness.”

She blinks back the tears. What she wouldn’t give for five more minutes of holding her mother’s hand. She feels like a ten year old again, desperate to deny the assassination, being gently corrected by Callista. 

Jessamine Kaldwin fades away, and Delilah’s soul fills the beating Heart. Delilah blackens it, her soul so corrupted. She just wants to throw up as the spirit belonging to her aunt begins taunting her, promising revenge, but enough is enough. Her next destination is Dunwall, no matter what happens. 

She scans the palace over one more time, learning what she can, and on her way out, Emily spits on Luca’s body for good measure.

  
  


**Aboard the Dreadful Wale**

She’s decided after they returned from the palace that she would place her father on Karnaca’s throne. It makes sense, he is more than capable of protecting himself (immortal witches aside), and she has removed any other potential leaders, most through nonlethal means. When they dock in Cullero, the newspapers are all filled with proclimations of Luca’s assassination, questions of who would take over. The Duke’s advisors are attempting to sort through the mess, but Emily’s first act when she restores her rule will be to restore another. 

It isn’t so bad, really. The voyage is smooth and slow (so as not to attract attention), and she had written her goodbye letters in the lone hour before they set off, paying a poor street urchin more than he’d ever seen in his whole life to get them to Pastor, Amaris, and Hypatia. One letter is longer than the others.

It isn’t so bad! Until they see Dunwall. 

A dark fog lingers over the air, and fires can be seen burning from the palace courtyard. Sunken ships jut out of the water here and there, providing them with an obstacle course as they try to get as close to the docks as they can.

There are no members of the City Watch waiting for them. Emily suspects they are long dead, loyal or not.

But there is one enemy aboard the deck, waiting for her. 

“Same old Dunwall,” Meagan sighs. “Smoke, and garbage. And rats.”

Emily approaches, glancing down to make sure her pistol is ready for Delilah’s teeth. She gives her captain a smile, but is met with a stoney expression.

“Hey. There you are. I was wanting the chance to talk.”

“What’s going on?” Emily asks, casually leaning on the railing. “Meagan?”

“People have called me that for a long time, but it’s a lie. My name is Billie Lurk.”

“Everyone’s full of secrets. Why do I feel like you’ve got more to say?”

Meagan… Billie’s eyes are wide open and sad. No, regretful. There is a still moment between them as a whale slowly breaks the surface of the ocean just a few hundred feet away.

“I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but you deserve the truth. I’ll just… I’ll just say it. Fifteen years ago I ran with a mercenary gang. We got paid to kill people. Some who deserved it. Some who didn’t.”

The name Billie Lurk is familiar… she did her research when she was in her teens, desperate to find them and exact her revenge. But her father had guided her away from that path, telling her that the Whalers were done and over. 

Billie grabs her arm, where just one week ago it didn’t exist. 

“I― this is hard to admit.”

“Whatever it is,” Emily says, muscles tensing. “Spit it out.”

“Our leader was the assassin Daud. When I was part of the crew… our last big job together… we were paid to…”

Emily leans in close, “You helped Daud kill my mother.”

Silence. Almost five minutes pass. Though Dunwall Tower burns in the distance, Emily recalls a perfectly sunny day, fifteen years ago. Being grabbed and kidnapped as she’s trying to run away, not even five seconds after her mother was stabbed by a man in red. Blindfolded, delivered to two noblemen, brothers, who kept her locked in a room in a brothel. The nicer courtesans would bring her food and talk to her, having no idea of her true identity. They would bring her crayons. It was almost six months of that single room (aside from one single escape, where she almost made it to the Distillery District) until a man in a skull mask rescued her. 

Emily raises her pistol, and Meagan’s eyes go wide. But the barrel of the gun points to the sky and she lets out a warning shot. In the distance, among rooftops, she sees walking figures stop to find the source of the noise. All of Dunwall would see this ship, Foster and Anton would have no choice but to flee. Meag― Billie backs up towards the pistol lying on a nearby crate but doesn’t move to grab it.

“I can’t ever forgive you for what you did. But… suffering has a way of twisting people. You’re a different woman today than you were then.”

There was more diplomacy in those words than she had ever managed in fifteen years of courts, wars, and dinners.

“Not all of us did what I did, or became what Delilah became. I know you’ll never get over it, but neither will I.”

“I hope not. Goodbye Billie.”

  
  
  


**Death to the Empress**

_NO ONE COULD HELP YOU, DEAR SISTER!_

The Dreadful Wale is already on its way out. Perhaps it’s going to the safety of Kingsparrow Island, since it’s obvious that Delilah has obliterated the Royal Navy. Along with everything else. Things are bad in the city, could it get any worse? Strange trees grow all over, from the middle of the streets to the tops of buildings. The carriage railways are disfigured and twisted. Gravehounds sleep in the streets, ready to chomp down on the first civilian they see. 

Her mind is on Billie, still. 

She would have awarded Meagan riches beyond her wildest dreams, half of what gold she’d spotted in the Duke’s vault. But.. how could she even think to give Billie Lurk a single coin? Was she the one who had suspended Corvo in the air all those years ago, helplessly forcing him to watch the assassination? Was she the one who had pulled Emily by the arm and used dark magic to teleport her far away from the Tower? Or was she just somewhere in the shadows, watching it all go down and ready to back Daud up, should it go awry? It didn’t matter. She might as well have held the sword.

_Billie would know how to find Daud. You could get real revenge if you wanted._

Of course, the hesitation kicked in again. There were mentions that the person who had defeated Delilah the first time around was Daud. That he had saved _Emily’s_ life fifteen years ago. That this whole coup was the second attempt at the throne. She wasn’t sure if she believed it. 

Maybe she didn’t have the energy to chase rumors. Maybe she was exhausted.

Blood. Wine. Rats. Whale oil. It all covers the streets. She stays high up and crouched, arming the normal bolts on her crossbow to remove the dogs. There aren’t any witches yet, as far as she can tell. But there could be other hostiles in the area. The Hatter gang were approaching on the alleys surrounding Dunwall Tower before the coup, who’s to say they aren’t here and ready to stab the first person that rounds the corner?

Is the song playing over the city speakers magical? Or is it just for fear?

The closer she gets to the entrance to the palace, the more bodies line the cobblestones. Overseers and their loyal wolfhounds, slain in an effort to stop witches from controlling the Empire. Hatters torn apart by Bottle Street Gang, as they attempted to pick apart what was left of the various apartments and businesses. Despite having been the one to blame her for the Crown Killer murder, the journalist at the Dunwall Courier is relieved to see her again. His once busy office is barricaded against the war outside, but she promises him an interview once this is all over. The truth about Delilah needs to reach the eyes and ears of as many of her citizens as possible. 

_I DIDN’T BREAK IT, YOU LITTLE LIAR!_

City Watch and citizen alike hang from makeshift gallows. It’s all so harrowing.

She climbs and climbs until she’s at the entrance to the secret refuge, where she’d left Ramsey. The place is unfortunately covered in magical vines and flora, but she does note that the witches have moved the broadcasting system to out here. She has a terrible, regrettable, deadly idea.

Empress Emily Drexel Lela Kaldwin gives the people of Dunwall a proper speech, continuing to speak even as she spots figures running across rooftops towards her. 

She promises them hope, peace, and an end to Delilah’s reign.

It’s what her mother would have done.

Coldridge Canal makes sense. They won’t be watching it. It’s difficult to climb up the rocks, but she doesn’t chance magic. Emily isn’t sure of what people who are marked by the Outsider can sense, but she’s spent enough money at the black market shops to have her gear perfected. It really is too easy to mount an assault on Dunwall Tower, isn’t it? 

She knows she ought to be killing the witches instead of knocking them unconscious, but she has a feeling that, much like Breanna Ashworth, once Delilah is removed from the picture they won’t have any powers to resist arrest with. 

Besides, even with dark magic, if Emily could incapacitate them once, she’ll do it a thousand times over. 

_NO ONE REMEMBERS THE TRUTH, EXCEPT ME, JESSAMINE_

The witches in the courtyard spot her, but they aren’t a match. One after the next they fall to slumber, the intoxicant of the sleep dart removing them from the fight. Emily remembers to crush the skulls of the gravehounds as she kills them. She can’t wait to fight Delilah.

Interestingly enough, the least offensive change to the courtyard is the addition of a greenhouse, where there was once guard’s quarters. Inside are four witches, easily dealt with, working on some sort of pigment for Delilah’s paintings. Emily never liked it when people chanted in unison, be it witches or Overseers.

Statues line the road leading up to the palace. Stone Overseers stuck in some place and time, with pebbles floating around them. Much like her father is trapped. Perhaps, if… when she defeats Delilah, she can revive them too, and have some _loyal_ soldiers watching her back.

One of the tunnels leads to the kitchen. They pour bad wine down it that travels down the water lock and into the river. She decides to take that entrance instead of the front door. A part of her wants to make a grand entrance, but she absolutely knows that’s going to get her killed.

_I WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER!_

High Overseer Yul Khulan’s body is strung up against a shrine of Overseer masks and burning candles. She wishes she could take him down but it will have to wait. He _will_ be given a burial. She should have written him. Should have told him to wait, and let her solve the pieces of the puzzle. Not that he would have listened, but at least another death wouldn’t be on her conscience. 

There are statues of Delilah all around the palace, taunting her and whispering dark promises of another world. She knows Emily is coming. 

Nearly every display case is smashed, nearly every painting slashed. Her father’s room, the first she reaches, is a complete mess. Servants bodies are littered here and there with no respect. Why? Why?!? What did these poor workers do to the witches? Overseers, she could maybe understand, since they preached against the dark magic the women utilized. But servants?!

She does find Bernard, the palace treasurer, hiding in one of the bathrooms, the entrance completely blocked off by various pieces of furniture. He reveals that Delilah has been using the Overseer’s chapel as her painting room since the coup began, and Emily gives him a few scraps of food and a spare S&J elixir as thanks. And a pistol she had pulled off a deceased member of the City Watch. 

“Don’t use it, if you can help it. Even I’m trying not to fight these witches in open combat. But if you see the opportunity to flee, do it. Otherwise, I’ll come back for you, okay?”

Bernard’s eyes go wide, comically enlarged by his glasses. 

“Okay… if I don’t see you in a few days, I’ll leave in the wee hours of the morning, while they’re sleeping. Don’t worry, I know to avoid the dog skulls!”

By the Void, if Bernard was her only staff member left she will be needing to promote him to seniority. A lot of people were going to be hired to fill positions as soon as this was done. From Overseers to City Watch to basic government positions. Perhaps this would be good for the citizens, desperate for coin.

She finally found her way to the chapel and set about discerning Delilah’s true intentions. It seemed as though she wanted to remake reality? Was that even possible? Her audiograph revealed that Delilah had managed to create a living tree by painting one within the chapel and utilizing whale runes to allow Void magic to alter the world around her. Was the Outsider allowing or aiding her with this, or is her power beyond his control now?

_But harmony must be maintained between the corrupt runes and their pure counterparts! Two corrupt, aligned with two of thepurest. If this harmony is not observed, the magic of the painting could get twisted around and fail, or even turn against me._

Emily liked the idea of using Delilah’s magic against her… but after seeing all of Dunwall in ruin and chaos, she equally struggled against the urge to just finish her off with her father’s sword. She worked on creating the corrupt ruins, muttering to herself as quietly as she could;

“What would Meagan Foster do? She would kill Delilah.”

She grabbed the dried kelp and algae.

“What would Anton Sokolov do? He would use her magic against her.”

Ground up flowers from the greenhouse.

“What would Billie― she would murder Delilah. Maybe even duel her. I don’t know, I don’t really know Billie like I thought I knew Meagan.”

Human bones infused with the fluids of terror and regret? Emily hoped she didn’t know the humans these bones were made of.

“What would Hypatia do? She would find another way. I… I don’t know.”

The magic glowed and hummed, the blue writings throughout the room turning gold. She picked up a skill inscribed with markings, assuming it was the corrupt rune Delilah had written about, and made her way towards the Throne Room.

A deep breath.

“What would Corvo do? Fifteen years ago he restored Dunwall to its former glory, killing as few as possible. If he could stay his hand from the Lord Regent’s heart, can I stay my hand from Delilahs?”

Two witches fall unconscious in the security room.

“Would my mother have wanted me to kill her half-sister? Does she even care about Delilah?”

Anxiety leaves her heart, just a little, when she restores power to the palace. As though it’s just a very messy building that needs a good cleaning.

Through Jessamine’s secret room was the entrance to the Safe Room, where she finds a statue perfectly bearing Ramsey’s likeness. Emily rolls her eyes and squeezes past his outstretched hand and up the stairs of the Safe Room, to wear her bed used to be. Strange writings and arrangements of candles decorate the sections of the Tower she felt safest in. 

Alexi’s body isn’t in here. Emily worries what the witches might have done to it. Best case, Duke Abele had the bodies of the loyal City Watch buried in some mass grave or thrown into the river. Worst case… 

She mutters a quick recitation of the Seven Strictures. Wyman and Emily goofed around their whole lives, not believing a word of the Abbey, but Alexi had been a devout follower. 

Gods, did anyone tell Alexi’s parents that she was killed? 

Emily charges into the throne room. She knows she shouldn’t, but Delilah is fully aware that the younger Kaldwin has arrived. 

It’s nice to use the pistol. She’s been meaning to.

Almost every weapon in her arsenal is used, every power. They struggle back and forth and Delilah damn near wins three different times. Like a more powerful version of Paolo, she dissipates into smoke when killed and instantly reformes. It’s a little fun to kill her again and again, mostly because it doesn’t matter. Of course, she’s still fucking immortal. Delilah fights back as good as she gets, and if it weren’t for Meag― Billie’s training, her arms would tire from blocking and parrying against the whalebone sword. Just when it seems like Delilah is about to send magical thorns for Emily’s throat, though, she brings out the Heart of a Living Thing.

It screeches. It wails. Green void magic claws its way into Delilah’s chest and restores her spirit. 

Everything goes black, but she can still hear Delilah’s voice. The Empress stands over her, and Emily thinks that’s going to be it, but Delilah retreats into the safety of her painting, and the alternate reality within. The invitation to follow rings in her ears.

The Heart, dear Piero’s invention, crumbles into dust without a soul inside it.

There’s a good pause as Emily catches her bearings. She comes _this_ close to throwing up in her own damn throne room, but at least she’s safe. Sort of.

“Father? Corvo? Can you hear me?”

She cups his grizzled cheek, hoping to feel his beard once more. Instead, she only feels stone. Delilah must, indeed, be neutralized in order for the statues to resurrect. She hopes. The corrupt rune is placed on the throne, imbalancing the magic of the painting, and Corvo’s statue is given one last glance before she steps through. 

Inside is a completely different world. A world Delilah dreamed of, surrounded by stone statues and a colorless sky. 

Emily knows that the woman sitting on the throne, just a hundred feet away, is not Delilah. It’s a trap. Instead, she follows the humming of a deranged witch, up a cliff of rock. The Brigmore bitch is there, casting some ritual, and doesn’t sense Emily sneaking up from behind.

She wants to kill her. The adrenaline is still pulsing in her ears and making her grit her teeth, but Emily is better than that. Luca was enough of a message. This is different.

Just like Corvo taught her, she pulls her wrist bone against the windpipe with one hand and covers the mouth and nose with the other. She pulls. Hard. Emily’s not going to kill her aunt but she wants it to hurt a little. 

In the real world, she places Delilah on the throne and watches from behind a statue as the current Empress of the Isles unknowingly traps herself in her own painting. Before all the fighting, the painting had an empty throne. When it reforms itself, the fabric and pigment reforms itself ever so slightly, and a woman sits upon it instead. Emily hopes that she stays there forever, Outsider willing, but she has a feeling that someday, however many thousands of years from now, Delilah may very well return. 

A dribble of blood gently rolls down her forehead. Her coat, her actual royal coat, is slashed and torn to shreds. There’s a slight dent in her father’s sword where it clashed with Delilah’s.

Her father.

Corvo!

Her hand cups his cheek once more, and this time she can feel the stone crackling and groaning as it turns to flesh. He falls into her, with confused, loving brown eyes. The Royal Protector is quite disoriented, still glancing around the throne room for Abele, Delilah, and Ramsey. His… his hair has more grey than she remembers. But his arms are pulling his daughter towards him and she falls into the hug with a sob. 

“Emily… what happened?”

“Let’s sit down. I’ll explain it all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so painfully aware of a ton of typos (new keyboard, who dis?). I will be trying to fix them as I read through the two chapters.


	2. Absolute

**One Day After, and the Wound is Still Open**

  
  
  


There aren’t a lot of people to turn to. She hardly has any government staff left, almost all of the guard in the Palace district are dead, and at least a quarter of the civilian population have fled the city. 

Corvo is a saint. He’s done this before, fifteen years ago. He gives the Empress the guidance she so desperately needs. But Emily knows that she only has a few more days before she needs to send him down to Karnaca as the newly appointed Duke.

“I think your best bet would be to approach the Academy of Natural Philosophy. Bright minds, even if they are eccentric, are going to be what you need to restore order in Dunwall.”

“I had Anton write letters bearing my emergency code. Driscol and Poolwick are sending in military reinforcements. We’re blessed that, while exceptionally prepared and skilled in the ways of subterfuge, Delilah didn’t strategize beyond Dunwall. Outside of the city, Gristol is actually stable.”

“Have you heard from Morley and Tivia?”

Emily cuts another strand of vines out of the walls, placing them in the cart that will transport them to be burned in the streets. A few civilians looking to earn coin are here and there, cleaning up what they can from the once majestic walls, and she lowers her voice so as not to cause any sort of political panic. 

“They’re still actively threatening war. The last time they had the chance to overthrow the Empire like this was fifteen years ago, but Hiram Burrows was smart. Weaponized. If they were to attempt an assault, we’d be crushed.”

“Not with Karnaca’s support,” Corvo offers. 

He doesn’t get it. The last thing any of these civilians need right now is more conflict in the streets, not when they’ve just finished two months of hiding from witches, and six months of hiding from the Crown Killer before that. No, she will give Morely and Tivia as much gold to keep them happy as she can; thank goodness Delilah didn’t spend much. Hardly any need for currency when all you want is bones and mushrooms.

“Do you have any potential candidates for replacement Royal Spymaster? I have my recommendations… if they’re still alive.”

“Oh?” Emily asks, handing a tired looking civilian a bottle of water. 

"Jameson Curnow, Geoff’s kid. He reported in from Coldridge last night, after you foolishly made the announcement over the city loudspeakers. The officers across the canal have been keeping low and quiet during the coup so as to figure out a resistance plan.”

Everyone is wearing masks to protect from the dangers of handling the dead bodies of servants, the spore releasing vines, and the rotten food that the witches let fester and mold in the walls and carpet. It allows her the satisfactory freedom of grinning without anyone seeing. Corvo had nearly thrown his beloved sword out the window when she told him about the loudspeakers. 

“Of course, if you are more interested in a Spymaster with superior military experience, General Tobias could be called in.”

Emily rolls her eyes, “I’ll take Curnow.”

“Just because Tobias served under the Lord Regent doesn’t mean he’s untrustworthy. He was just following orders,” her father pointed out.

They both work to lift bodies into carts, wrapped in spare bedsheets and linens for respect. Emily feels weighed down to identify each face, guard and servant alike, but she knows as they leave the palace walls she will need others to help place names to faces. She doesn’t know every subject in her city on a personal basis, as useful as that would be right now.

An Overseer, one of the ones who had been frozen in stone like her father, catalogs the various magical artifacts left behind by the witches. Most of them were currently sitting in Coldridge prison, awaiting trial. Much like those at the Royal Conservatory, Delilah’s coven were left powerless as soon as their leader was trapped within the painting. Emily almost feels sorry for them, lost women with great ambitions and twisted anger. Then, she picks up another body and places it in the cart, remembering what she’s having to fucking do right now.

“Lots of people can claim that they were ‘just following orders’, Father. It doesn’t make them innocent.”

For a brief moment, Corvo gives her a look of pride.

“Why didn’t Anton stick around? If he was so crucial to helping you out?”

She thinks about Meagan, about Billie, and her warning gunshot. Her fist clenches around the City Watch sword she’d been given and she has to count to ten. 

“It was too dangerous. There was a great risk that I could have been killed. They took the Dreadful Wale and headed out towards Whitecliff.”

“I would hope that you have a reward planned for them, your Majesty.”

Lenora Helmswater, one of only three surviving advisors of hers, tip toes around broken glass and toppled furniture to bring her a sealed envelope. Emily gratefully accepts it.

“Ah yes, Lord Mace Brimsley wishes to loan out his finances to the Empire in restoring infrastructure and aiding our fair government in investing in the industries that shall provide us with the resources we so desperately need to restore our great city,” she sarcastically reads. “He’s just trying to buy his way onto a parliament seat, what with half the voting blocks murdered by Abele and Delilah.”

“Are you going to accept his help?” 

“What do you think, Advisor Helmswater? Would I be insufficiently indebted to him? Or is he perhaps planning to tack on some crippling interest to this loan?”

“I don’t doubt it. We have the finances to appoint guards and construct new ships, perhaps even the finances to rebuild the city. We don’t have the finances to go to war, and win.”

“Thank you, Lenora. If you could continue your search for Advisor Wainwright, I will have a response prepared for Lord Brimsley by this evening.”

Her advisor gives her a long low bow. It’s clear that these people, no matter what they thought of her before the coup, are pleased to have Emily Kaldwin back on the throne. 

Corvo rights a fallen armchair and sits down in it, “What about the Captain of this Dreadful Wale you were speaking of? If she was so strategic and fundamental to your success, why don’t you appoint her in a military position?” 

“Trust me, I do not want her in Dunwall Tower. If you knew who she was, you would kill her.”

“Oh really? Then why didn’t you?”

Emily frowns and hacks away at another set of vines, ignoring the pointed eye contact her father is giving her. It frustrates her that he says that; Corvo Attano who did everything in his power to not kill unless it was absolutely necessary. The Lord Protector who taught her that every person whom she did not directly kill would be one more person that got to go home and see the positive outcome of her actions. But he’s not asking for his sake. Corvo, more than any person in the Isles, likes to make her think about her actions. Perhaps even more than the Outsider. 

There was an idea. No. No! That was an immeasurably bad idea, going to _him_ for advice. Of course, now that she’s thought it, he’ll no doubt be there to taunt her in her dreams.

  
  


Dammit.

  
  


She turns to one of the nearby guards, a young, terrified looking rookie.

“Can you go fetch Jameson Curnow for me? He’ll be working in Coldridge Prison, if I’m not mistaken. Tell him it’s urgent business.”

“Y-Yes, your Majesty!”

Every civilian carries a weapon on them. Wolfhounds walk the corridors, sniffing for any scent of hidden Brigmore assailants. A few hearthfires keep the halls from filling with a cold, dreadful shadow. To her right, one of the various statues of Delilah has been broken up with sledgehammers, the stone head decapitated from the rest of the body and lolling around on the carpet. She takes her boot and places it along a crack threatening to split the stone from the forehead to the ear to the jaw, and she stomps down. 

“Throw these statues into the river once you’ve finished dismantling them. Let the hagfish keep them company.”

“Of course, your Majesty.”

It’s going to take them a few days, time that Emily doesn’t have, to clean the palace. She hands Bernard, now appointed senior staff, a few pouches of gold that she’d brought from Karnaca and instructs him to hire more workers off the street. 

“Let’s go to my office, father, to meet with Curnow. I want a private discussion.”

Corvo leads her up the Tower, hand protectively at the pistol at his waist as they pass by the various empty rooms. A few guards give them low, shameful bows and she regards them with knowing, but forgiving eye contact. They were the ones from the outlying districts who, while not directly betraying their Empress, did nothing to rebel against Delilah. Perhaps it would take years to mend trust between all of Dunwall. Perhaps only days.

  
  
  


**I Should Have Done More**

  
  
  


“I wish I could give you the power to resurrect people from the dead. I really do. Wouldn’t that just solve everything?”

Emily is silent, not looking at him. Her eyes are cast onto the stone slab that floats through a cold sky, keeping them both aloft. A bloody whale drifts through the sky to her left, and bone charms dance around in a circle to her right. He sits criss-crossed on a couch that materialized out of thin air.

“If only Alexi could come back! Then you could have a Royal Protector! That would be that problem solved!”

Silence.

“If only you could resurrect Adora Copperspoon! Would Delilah have been so vengeful if she’d had a mother?”

“I did fine without mine.”

“Ah of course. But you grew up in a palace and she grew up in the sewers,” the Outsider chuckles. “Would you resurrect Jessamine if I gave you the power? Or would the world’s wounds continue to fester and sicken, regardless?”

“You know the reason Alexi and my mother are dead are because you can’t stop giving people your special little tattoo. Daud? Delilah? What’s the point of giving my father and I the power to stop them if you’re going to give them the power to attack us in the first place?”

“Wars come and go, regardless of Dark Magic. I just want to make things interesting.”

The void darkens and darkens, threatening to swallow her, and she wakes up in the cot she’d been sleeping in as they refurbished the palace. She glances at her hand, still bandaged up and covering her mark of heresy, before climbing out and getting ready for the days.

It frustrates Emily that she hasn’t had the time to visit the Mayhews. Obviously someone had to have told the family of Alexi’s death by now, but it should have been the responsibility of the Empress, or Corvo at the very least, to personally recognize all that the Captain had done for Emily. From saving her life when they were just fifteen to a decade of steadfast, loyal service, to her final moments trying to protect the Kaldwin rule. 

At least they will know that Ramsey’s trial is coming up (the bastard having been unfrozen from his statue state in the Safe Room), and that Emily would personally deliver justice. She hasn’t decided yet if she will have him executed or if he would serve a life sentence― either way he will suffer for what he did. 

Still… it takes her a few days to muster the courage.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Mayhew,” Emmily says, her hands holding a hot cup of tea. “I should have done more.”

She can’t bring herself to mention that Alexi died from her father’s sword.

The elderly couple seated at the other side of the small dining table give her looks of sorrow and sympathy. Emily’s known them for a dozen years, and there’s no need for formalities in their familiar apartment, but there is still an air of distance. Hesitancy. As though they’re not sure if Dunwall is safe once more (and it’s not, not quite yet). 

“The coup wasn’t your fault,” Gideon, Alexi’s father, sighs. “We’re glad you weren’t hurt, and that the monsters behind this have been… taken care of.”

The tea actually tastes delicious. She enjoys it and glances around the familiar abode; a medium size apartment with a number of military decorations (from an impressive lineage), and family silvergraphs. She stands and admires a newspaper clipping about Alexi’s promotion ceremony, from five years ago.

“I’ve… I’ve been dreading to tell you this. I don’t know where her body is. The coup all happened so fast and when I left, Dunwall was filled with the fallen. When I came back, the witches had completely destroyed the interior and I couldn’t… I didn’t see her.”

Gideon and Paulina Mayhew share a long, hesitant look before one takes the empty tea cup from the Empress and the other gathers a ring of keys with shaky hands. They lead her out to the backyard, to a lump of dirt with a tombstone. The name of her best friend is hastily scratched into the stone, but fresh flowers have been planted and cared for all around the marker.

_ALEXI KATOVA MAYHEW_

_B.1826, 3rd Day, Month of Rain_

_D. 1852, 18th Day, Month of Earth_

_The last of the loyal._

Emily’s jaw drops and she sinks to her knees in the grass of the Mayhew’s backyard. This feels raw and unreal and heartbreaking but relieving. Not even caring that the other two are watching their Empress so openly mourn, she lets the tears fall for a few minutes in silence. 

Alexi was so different to Wyman... Emily loved her in a similar way, though never acted upon it. There was something so endearing about a girl so serious, perfecting her posture and practicing her sword fighting skills on the daily. Following an exact schedule. No detail was too small to be overlooked, but not every argument had to be won. 

How would things have gone if Alexi hadn’t been stabbed? Would she have come to Karnaca? Would the two of them instead have come up with some “brilliant” war strategy, like they used to do when Corvo was training them? “Scale the Tower” or “Three ships from Kingsparrow”? Alexi used to have a special move to trip assailants that she amusedly refused to show Emily. It always frustrated her, in the best way. 

“How did you find her?” she finally asks.

Gideon coughs and tries to stammer through an excuse, “It all happened in a hurry, we don’t really want to bore you with the details―”

Emily knows a lie with ease, after all she’s seen, but she doesn’t wish to come across as threatening to the Mayhews of all people. She stands and gently takes both parent’s hands and repeats her question;

“That Tower was fortified with mechanical soldiers and women practicing dangerous Dark Magic. When I left, Alexi’s body was next to my Safe Room, the exit that I used to escape. How… who got it out for you? Who managed to sneak past Delilah herself?”

“If… if we show you, will you promise not to punish him?”

“Of course… of course, Mr. Mayhew!”

Paulina has tears in her eyes but takes the Empress back inside, to the corridor where the family bedrooms are located. The door in the far left corner is slightly ajar, though no light streams through. Her fingers at her side, Emily silently casts her Dark Vision spell and sees the silhouette of a young man with a Gristol military rifle in his hands, sitting on a twin size bed. She ends the spell as Gideon opens the door.

“Jerimiah? We have a guest who wishes to speak with you.”

The young man’s voice is muffled by the door, but carries the tone of fear all the same, “Pa! I told you, you can’t let anyone know I’m… I could be tried for desertion! Absent without leave!”

She places a hand on Mr. Mayhew’s shoulder and gently pushes him aside. Gideon lets out a bit of a stammer but does not dare stop Her Majesty. Emily turns the door knob and opens it very, very slowly. 

The boy sitting on the bed is only seventeen or eighteen, with familiar orange hair in a military style cut; shaved on the sides and medium length on top. Thin, but not starved. Short, like Alexi. He looks a little more worn down than a teenage boy ought to look, but his eyes have a spark to them. The clothes he wears are normal civilian attire but Emily spots the torn Gristol military uniform folded and resting on the dresser in the corner. Not an officer’s coat, but the lower ranking of corporal. It’s obvious he is in the middle of cleaning and assembling his rifle, but he sets the pieces down hastily on his bed and kneels before her.

“Y-Your Royal Highness!”

“I remember you, you’re Alexi’s brother, aren’t you? Jerimiah?”

“Yes, your Majesty!”

She gently helps him to his feet, checking him over for scrapes and cuts. There are scars here and there, beginning to fade but not quite gone. He’s a little dirty and it’s obvious he’s been in hiding. Then again, who hasn’t?

“You’re the one that… retrieved Alexi? From the palace? How? When?”

Pauline returns with chairs and, despite Gideon’s desire to hover, shuts the bedroom door. Emily glances around, spotting a trophy under a light layer of dust, and a completely empty closet. It’s obvious that this boy hasn’t lived in this room in a while.

“I… well… we heard about the coup from Driscow, about two days after it happened. Couriers had been sent all across Gristol with proclamations that you were usurped by ‘The True Kaldwin’. I was part of a unit of eight-hundred, stationed in Fort Euhorn. Half of them believed Delilah and were ready to march on Alba, half weren’t. Fights began breaking out from within and Morley Navy began heavily patrolling the waters as close to Driscow as they could, prepping for war. In the chaos, I slipped away.

“I know I shouldn’t have. I know it was illegal, Your Majesty, and I’m sorry. But I had to check on my family. The couriers had brought official audiographs spoken from Delilah and Duke Abele, but other letters were passed from hand to hand, detailing what was really going on in Dunwall. Citizens and soldiers slaughtered in the street. Automatons? Magic? I wasn’t going to chance risking my parent’s lives.”

Emily glances at the windowsill, where she can see small holes in the walls, evidence of nails that protectively held wooden boards to the glass. All over the room she spots traces of a stakeout. Gunpowder in the carpet, shrapnel from makeshift springrazors littering the desk , and empty vials of elixir swept under the bed. He’d been protecting his family for the past two months.

“Took me three days to make it down here. I’m not proud of this but I stole a nobleman’s horse― not his best horse! He had a dozen at his estate in the countryside!”

“Corporal Mayhew, I’m not going to punish you for anything you say.”

He visibly relaxes and mutters a quiet “thank you” before clearing his throat, “Well… I made it to Dunwall just as things were starting to get bad. Out in these neighborhoods, there were just wild dogs and gangs. I managed to secure our apartment as best I could, but my parents said that Alexi… Alexi hadn’t spoken to them since the morning of the coup. The papers were saying you’d been spotted fleeing the City aboard a ship, and we thought maybe she had gone with you. But I needed to know.”

“You infiltrated Dunwall Tower on your own?” Emily asks, leaning forward in her seat. 

Jermiah smiles sadly, “It wasn’t hard. No offense, Your Majesty! I mean no offense, of course. But Delilah’s crew were so focused on securing the lower entrances that they didn’t really check the rooftop of the palace. I climbed up the sides of the palace by holding onto the pipes, in the dead of night, and went for one of the throne room skylights. I brought my father’s toolkit with me and unscrewed the hinges. It was easy enough to gently pop out the pane itself and slip through, but I didn’t screw it back in. You… well… you may want to fix that. I apologize. I did find your father in there, and that’s when I knew it was bad.”

“Corvo is alright now. As are the others that were turned to stone.”

“Oh. That’s good to hear. But...yes, I did find Alexi’s body, in what I assume was your bedroom. I took her out one of the nearby windows, and made my way down as slowly as possible― brought rope with me, didn’t care if someone knew I’d escaped from the Tower. No one stopped me in the streets… there were just so many bodies that I think they figured I was a looter and looked the other way.”

Emily is silent. Shocked. This kid pulled off a stunt that she could only attribute to Corvo and herself, or perhaps the Whalers. Despite his defensive posture, she wonders... 

“Are you any good with that rifle?”

“Er… yeah. Yeah, I prefer it to a pistol. That’s why I never made the cut for City Watch.”

“No worries, I can use a pistol.”

He gives her a confused look. Emily stands and helps him to his feet, offering her hand for a handshake.

“Jerimiah Mayhew, how would you like a job?”

  
  
  


**It Begs of Me My Patience**

  
  
  


Dunwall Tower is beginning to fill with life once more. The new staff she’s hired aren’t nearly as nicely dressed as her old servants, the guards half starved and skittish. She really doesn’t mind. The food’s good. People just bring home cooked meals to share with each other as they begin to rebuild the city, and Emily washes dishes when no one else is in the kitchen (lest they see the mark on the back of her hand). 

The remaining Overseers have retreated to Holger Square, focused on selecting a High Overseer. Emily doesn’t mind, the more undecided they are about who they pick, the longer she gets to go without them preaching in her halls. 

Before the coup, the mechanical musicboxes they carry on their chests didn’t give her a headache. She knows now that she’ll have to live with her acceptance of _his_ help, and the consequences that arrive alongside it.

It barely matters. There are far more important things to worry about.

Skiffs come and go from the waterlock, and Jameson Curnow warns her constantly that any one of these civilians could be an assassin. She warns him that she’s been trained by Corvo Attano, and it shuts him up for good. 

With the influx of common folk, there haven’t been many nobles visiting the Palace district. A few, here and there, to tantalizingly offer her their coin, but for the most part, Emily works with the real people. The ones she should have been paying the most attention to. Hecklers call out from windows as she inspects the streets with her newly appointed Crownsguard; a mixture of remaining City Watch and the local makeshift militia, and a few members of the local gangs who have taken the pardon she offers in exchange for leaving the gangs as penniless, but free. Anyone who joins the Crownsguard, however, now does so with the warning that they will be tried for reported crimes in the future. 

The paycheck is nice, though. Nice enough to heed the warning and continue to enlist.

The Walls of Light have been dismantled. Watchtowers deactivated. The barriers sealing off neighborhoods begin to come down as, one by one, neighborhoods are cleaned up and cleared out. Obviously there aren’t enough people to fill the empty homes. A quarter of the civilian population had fled during the coup, and a third of the city was killed off fifteen years ago during the rat plague. But they can begin keeping track of residences, inspecting them to see if they are livable, and clearing out homes that aren’t.

Making sure that everyone has a home. That’s her first goal.

Making sure that everyone has work. That’s her second.

Ships begin to fill the harbor, and she spots smokestacks lighting up in the distance. Shops refill their original stock and hide the weapons they’d been selling during the coup. Emily doesn’t mind. After all this, she’d prefer her citizens were armed. 

“Are you planning to attend the coronation ceremony of Duke Attano?” Jameson Curnow asks her, picking at the cuffs of his new Royal Spymaster uniform.

“Is it responsible to leave the city right now?”

_I just got back from Karnaca._

She makes eye contact with her new Royal Protector, Jerimiah Mayhew, as he silently leans back in the corner with his rifle slung across his shoulder. She’s commissioned the engineers at the Academy to create a new weapon for him, only to find that they were working on something during the coup for protection. But sciencey types don’t typically know how to fight and parlay, so despite the brilliance of their inventions, the members of the Academy are more than happy to part with their technology for coin. 

His new rifle is powered on a small electrical cartridge, something one of the Philosophers called a battery. It fires a loud burst of stunning energy from very, very far away, enough to knock out even the most armored guard. 

Such tech would have been useful down in Karnaca, but there’s no reason Emily can’t use it now. The less people she has killed, even in defense, the brighter the fate of the city. 

“To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure. It’s a two week round trip at full speed but we don’t have many ships available for government use outside of rebuilding and emergency Naval forces. It would be a month round trip if we took a carriage,” Curnow says.

“Can Karnaca spare us a ship? It’s one of their industries, is it not?”

“I can ask them, of course. I will have someone dispatch a radio request to them, and we’ll likely have an answer by this evening.”

Emily smiled, “I take it the ISS Jessamine did not survive Delilah’s onslaught?”

Advisor Lenora shakes her head, “Ah. No, your Majesty. The explosion could be seen from any given vantage point in the city. The woman had a… theatrical fury.”

“When is the Serkonan coronation scheduled for?”

“Not for another two months. We could theoretically ask them to postpone.”

“Do I technically need to be re-coronated?” Emily asks, glancing up with a furrowed brow. 

Jerimiah stifles a snicker, and the older adults in the room shoot him a glare, but the Empress herself shares the amusement. Lenora places a rather large book on the desk and opens it to a section about civil wars.

“According to the Proclamation of 1837, coronations can only officially take place after a twelve month rule and with approval from both Parliament and the Abbey of the Everyman. The idea was proposed after the fall of Lord Regent Havelock, that in the event of multiple leaders rising and falling within such a short period, whosoever could hold the title for that period was stabilized enough to be crowned. I feel like Parliament will, of course, make an exception for you. Delilah would have needed the twelve month period, had she made a legitimate claim and gone through the proper process.”

“You mean instead of setting fire to Parliament?”

Jameson smiles, “Indeed. If she had not orchestrated such grotesque violence, she would have been, instead, referred to as Lord Regent Delilah for a period of time. Then Empress.”

“To be fair, the Kaldwins did this to the Olaskirs.”

“In any case, I think we can get away with skipping a re-coronation. Even for appearance’s sake. Tradition is out the window with the Abbey and Parliament all but demolished,” Lenora sighs.

Emily leafs through the hefty book on her desk for but a moment before closing it and handing it back to her advisor. She’s exhausted, hungry, and cold. But she must continue her work. Even if it kills her.

“We shant ask them to postpone the coronation. Karnaca needs a leader. It needs immediate attention. They must be in as much crisis as we are.”

“Very good, Lady Emily.”

A servant passes a note through the door to Jameson, who hands it to the Empress. She takes her time reading it and lets out a sigh of relief. It falls to the desk and she places her head in her hands, giving herself a moment of pause.

“Is… is everything alright?”

“It’s from the Broadcasting Room. They’ve received a formal announcement from Morely that they’re rescinding their Navy to their own waters, but sending a single ship to mediate. It’s a fucking blessing, is what it is.”

“Very good, your Highness.”

“It’s scheduled to arrive in three days. Will the two of you see to necessary arrangements? Whatever we have left… let’s at least try to show some Gristol class.”

  
  
  


**What Could Be Strong Enough to Numb This?**

  
  
  


“You’re tan.”

“And more muscular than the last time you saw m― Oh for fuck’s sake, Jerimiah, they can be in my bedroom, it’s okay. It’s Wyman!”

The younger Mayhew goes red and shuts the door, though she can see through the light drifting in the crack beneath the door that he’s pointedly just standing outside. An earnest Royal Protector.

Wyman lets out a musical laugh and flops down on the bed, spread eagle. One of the new Shan Yun audiographs plays opera music from across the room, though the dial is turned down so that it’s only loud enough to drown out their words. Emily joins Wyman on the bed and settles into their embrace with a sigh, her face pressing into flamboyant noble clothes smelling of Caulkenny perfume.

“Tell me about what happened.”

“I don’t know where to start. I think… I think part of it is my fault. We’ve had people assault the Tower before, Regenters and whatnot, but if I hadn’t neglected so much, maybe Delilah and Abele wouldn’t have had help from the inside. You know… when I was forced to flee the tower, as I made my way to the docks I hid in buildings that were crumbling and rotting long before the Grand Guard were destroying what they could. I was… we were all happy with foreign affairs so long as silver was coming in and drinks were flowing. I was only different from Luca Abele in that I practice manners.”

Wyman gives her a look, and she can tell that they’re holding back a scoff. 

“They’ll remember you for your cleverness and your kindness. They will remember you for being fair.”

A kiss interupts her pout. She rests her forehead against Wyman’s cheek.

“I don’t know if I… Wy… we’re not teenagers anymore. So much has happened that I… I’ve done things that would upset you.”

“That’s to be expected. I won’t ask you to be perfect, Emily.”

“I’ve killed Wyman. I lost count after twenty. One of them was innocent but none of them deserved it and I can’t stop picturing their faces when I dream. I… I was visited by _him_. And I accepted his offer.”

Emily unbandages her hand and shows her lover what she’s only showed her father. Their eyes go wide as they trace it, and Emily’s skin stings when their finger touches the brand. The candelabra on the dresser flickers and sputters, threatening to go out. Cold. Dark. Despite the various flames, there is a presence here. 

“I’ve read about it and seen the graffiti all over the Isles, but I never thought it was real,” Wyman murmured. 

“Powers. Bone charms. Shrines. Just another thing I ignored. It always sounded like something the Abbey made up to keep people afraid but… maybe they were right. About not being tempted. About the Outsider preying on weaker minds.”

“Come on now, Em. Don’t be like that.”

“What part of ‘I’ve killed people’ is making you think that it’s going to go back to what it was? What, ballroom dances and Fugue Feasts? Pranks on Tivian ambassadors? Running along rooftops like those children that don’t quite know what Whalers are?”

Wyman’s messy brown hair reflects the firelight, the flickers bouncing off their face. For the longest time, aside from Alexi, Wyman was the only person that Emily could truly call a friend, and yet it seems that they just aren’t… understanding it. 

“I lived in the shadow of my mother’s assassination for fifteen years and… and I embraced it. To get back what was mine.” 

A scowl.

“This isn’t about what you did in Karnaca. You’re trying to tell me something else.”

“I don’t think we can be together. Not… not while I’m dealing with this. I don’t know that I’m worthy to rule. Hell, I don’t even know if I can continue the Kaldwin line. ”

“I’d never force us to get married, political pressure or no. I’m not with you because you’re the _Empress_ . I’m with you because you’re _Emily_.”

“Wyman, I’m not that Emily anymore. I can never go back.”

“You’ve killed less people than the average City Watch grunt.”

_But I liked it. I wanted to kill more, even if I restrained my hand. The fighting… the thrill of it. Shooting and slashing at Delilah was the first time I felt like I was in control._

Emily sits up, her back to her lover. She remembers meeting Wyman at formal functions when they were just teenagers, hiding behind the curtains as officers patrolled the Morley palace halls. She can recount all of their inside jokes and code words. Camping trips while the paperwork was beginning to pile up. She takes an anxious breath.

“They’ve prepared a room for you down the hall. If you would like, I’ll have some bottles of Rivera Fig brought up for your enjoyment.”

“No. No, come on, Emily. Don’t treat me like one of them. Breaking up our relationship, I understand, but dont… don’t think that I’m some textile bitch here to kiss your shoes for lower tariffs.”

Her eyes well up but she doesn’t say anything. It takes her a moment to realize that Wyman is kneeling before her, taking her hand. She doesn’t make eye contact, she can’t bear to show her best friend the wall being built inside her. So she closes her eyes and just holds Wyman’s hands in silence.

“You know if you’re going to break my heart like this, you should at least have the decency to provide something stronger than Rivera Fig. I want a drink that shreds my liver in one go, Em’ly. A Gristol whiskey and cigar as mean as you.”

They’re both chuckling, and Wyman gives her one last kiss. It’s long and quiet, mixed with the taste of another tear, from whom she isn’t sure. 

  
  
  


**Jewels May Dull Over Time**

  
  
  


“You keep doing this, yet you know I won’t accept anything more from you. Our transaction is completed. You’ve given me what I needed to defeat Delilah and I gave you _panem et circenses_.”

He’s silent this time. Pensive. As though it’s not Emily that he’s thinking of.

“You only ever draw me into the Void to warn me of something. What is it?”

For a moment, she can swear his eyes aren’t black. That there’s a flash of light green. She remembers him saying that he was sacrificed by cultists four-thousand years ago. He would have had to be a human at some point. To show emotion and feel pain. At least, something other than amusement whenever misfortune befalls the subjects of the Empire. Yet his mannerisms hardly change. His appearance always the same. He acts not like a dictator that beckons worship but a silent banker placing coins again and again on one side until the scales tip and crash.

The rocky sensation of waves gently rolling the boat back and forth… she’s missed the way it can put her to sleep or wake her up.

Karnaca’s horizon looks different, though she can’t place why. Not a lot has been able to change just yet. It will be a few years before things begin to differ from Abele’s rule, even with Corvo working day and night to enact new policies. Even with the dissolution of the Howlers and Overseers. It will still have that seedy feeling about it.

It’s Addermire. That’s the change in the horizon. It’s lit up, even from here, with more organic lighting than those stark white hospital bulbs. It could almost be confused for a house rather than an institute at this distance. 

Emily pulls out her spyglass but can’t really make the more finite details. There is, of course, still only the carriage as the connecting access to the land. That wasn’t going to be fixed in a month, but there are many boats of various sizes moored nearby. She can see many small moving shapes, people that look to be the size of ants through her telescope, causing a great deal of traffic as the building is patched up and reopened. 

“We’re approaching the Aventa dockyards, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Lord Protector.”

He’s gotten more and more serious as the gravity of the Empire’s fate begins to weigh upon all of them. Jerimiah’s cabin has practically become the ship armory, and when he’s given his thirty minute breaks in the morning and at night, he spends them modifying and tinkering. Emily often wonders if he could have gotten into the Academy, but he insists that he prefers the security of a military salary (regrettably, many who pursue Natural Philosophy have fallen under the curse of lacking patronage). 

She’d heard rumors, but for once they bear some truth to them. 

The Dreadful Wale is, indeed, sinking into the Bay. It’s clear that it’s been abandoned near Santiago Fisheries. It meant something to Meagan but not a second thought to Billie, evidently. The waves threaten to spill over the deck and the mast is cracked, the top half resting against an abandoned apartment. Maybe it’s fitting. Maybe it represented Meagan Foster, now abandoned and decaying in the waves.

She tries not to be hurt. 

The dock at the mouth of the Grand Serkonan Canal, the western side of Point Abele. A carriage that drives directly to the Grand Palace waits for her when they leave the ship, the officers wearing fine red coats and bowing silently. Emily’s not an idiot. Corvo had warned her to carry weapons on her person, just in case. Even if they do not defy their new Duke openly, how many of them are down on their rent payments because they can’t demand fees from innocent civilians or make up new laws on the spot? 

“Are you to accompany us to the Palace?” Jerimiah asks.

Before any of the soldiers can answer, the carriage car opens and someone steps out. Emily half expects it to be her father, as this person is dressed in the darker colors she’s always associated with him, but it’s not. 

It’s not Corvo at all.

“Your Highness, Empress Emily Drexel Lela Kaldwin of Dunwall. It is an honor to meet you! I was asked by our fair Duke to come and give you an official tour of Karnaca,” Alexandria smiles. “ My name is Doctor Alexandria Hypatia, of Addermire Institute. Welcome to our city!” 

There’s a cheeky tone to her voice, and it reminds her of―

“Do you have proof of your identity?” Jerimiah asks, sticking out his hand with a demanding expression.

Officially, Emily has no idea who this woman is, and this is the first time she’s been in Serkonos in almost a decade. Officially, she’s down here to ensure that Corvo’s rule is a peaceful transition from a time of chaos. The glint in Hypatia’s eye makes her want nothing less than to throw her arms around the woman. Emily gently pushes her Lord Protector’s hand away and shakes Hypatia’s, for the sake of the public image. Her hand is given a reassuring squeeze, and then the doctor leads her to the carriage. 

“Follow behind us, I shall travel with the good Doctor,” Emily commands.

Jerimiah and her other guards all nod respectfully and watch as the Empress willingly gets into a vehicle alone with a complete stranger. The second the carriage starts moving, Alexandria tentatively crosses the gap between them and gives her a warm, kind hug. They say nothing and it speaks oceans more than all the empty political words she’s heard every day since Delilah’s fall. Alexandria gently shifts back into her seat and they watch the buildings pass in a blur. 

They have to watch their conversation, at least for a little while. Emily knows some of the various hiding spots in the palace, though, where she thinks she might steal Alexandria away for something more serious and truthful.

“I heard you recalled the Solution. Why?”

Hypatia’s face doesn’t quite fall, instead it transitions to pensive. Thoughtful. 

“It’s an older recipe. From before the… serum. Had I been more coherent during the last three years I would have realized that it didn’t quite give the effects it should have. Ideally, it would bolster a resistance to bloodfly fever, rather than just treat it.”

“Side effects?”

“There were some, yes. Vomiting and headaches. Easily disguised under the bloodfly fever. It can mess with one’s disposition as well, we found. But most medicines can do that. It’s not that Addermire Solution is dangerous, it’s that we released an unfinished product.”

Emily smiles, “I never felt any of that. Maybe Gristolians are just hardier.”

“Sun makes us soft, hmm?”

“Perhaps.”

Hypatia pulls out a small black book and write something in it, though Emily can’t quite see the pages. She then tucks the notes back into her breast pocket and moves a strand of her light brown hair behind her ear.

“You have an appointment with me tomorrow, if you so choose to accept it. I’m sure you’ll want to officially tour Addermire as well.”

“Should I have publicly admitted I was dismantling the Duke’s inner circle instead?”

The carriage pulls up to the Grand Palace, with two more following in its wake. A servant pulls the door open and Alexandria gestures for Emily to exit first, as is proper. 

“On the contrary. You told the people the truth,” Hypatia mutters. “That you were just south of Dunwall, planning a rebuttal to the false Empress’ reign. Serkonos is, funnily enough, south of Dunwall. You didn’t have to say how far south or wherein our fair country you were hiding.”

Various members of the council bow before her, before the doors open to reveal an older gentleman wearing a regal uniform that he doesn’t quite look comfortable in. Corvo gives her a bow, one that she returns respectfully, then a long hug.

“Your Majesty.”

“Father,” she mumbles into the lapels of his suit.

Behind him, Amaris Stilton gives her a wink. Lucia Pastor doesn’t outright scowl but her eyes still betray a sense of judgement. Emily can live with that. Others are present, eager to meet their restored monarch, and greet her to the Jewel of the South. The Grand Council, showering her with praise on her choice for the Serkonan rule. The new Royal Curator, Miranda Ngo, invites her to a night of their newest exhibits once the Royal Conservatory is reopened (The Karnaca Overseers are currently sweeping through to remove and study all remaining traces of Ashworth’s cult). Corvo’s new Grand Inventor, Artagon Groff, promises that the upcoming Festival of Automation during the Month of Timber is absolutely worth a visit (and an investment). 

The formalities are a little boring, especially because she must pretend as though she hasn’t climbed all over the roof of this building. 

“Nervous for your coronation, my lord?” Emily teases, as they walk through a definitively clean entryway. 

Never again will there be such an excess of food that it merely rots on the tables from disuse. Never again will guards fall asleep on the couches, too drunk and high to fight. Never again will witches plan devious assaults upon the Empire from this architectural marvel. Corvo presents the newly reformed palace with great pomp and pleasure, escorting her towards the offices and waving his hand for the rest to be dismissed.

“The doctor may stay,” Emily announces. “As well as the Royal Protector and Master Stilton.”

(There is a look of jealousy and confusion from the other officials, but the Grand Guard gently direct them towards the Palace’s pub and they eventually depart.)

Emily settles into a comfortable chair opposite Corvo’s desk. The office was probably the cleanest section of the palace before the… transition. Likely because Luca never used it. Now, it seems slightly lived in. A small silvergraph of Samuel Beechworth sits near the window, and new, vibrant plants fill the office with a sense of life. Some of Theodanis’ books have been pulled out and perused, resting on coffee tables next to whiskey classes with the light brown tint of recent use. 

Jerimiah closes the doors and locks them on Emily’s command, leaning against the wall and keeping an eye out for evesdroppers. Stilton and Hypatia pull up chairs alongside Emily and she feels more at ease than she has in months. 

“Is it okay? Are things on the mend?”

Amaris laughs, “More than you think. It’s amazing what mining legislation you can pass when the Duke actually makes time to hear what you have to say.”

The Timepiece flashes in her head for a second, though she’s not sure why. The images of Megan, both with her eye and arm, and without them, lingers. 

“No trouble from the Howlers?”

Corvo shakes his head, “None. Surprisingly, the one they called Paolo went missing at some point during the Coup. He’d been clashing with Vice Overseer Liam Byrne, who disappeared around the same time, according to the official report.”

“I suppose Durante’s plan bore fruit, then,” Emily sighs. “Paolo had Vera Moray’s hand on him, did you know that? Kept resurrecting on me until I crushed the damn thing.”

Jerimiah Mayhew’s eyes widen, realizing that he’s missing key information the rest are privy to. Hypatia merely rubs her brow in disbelief and Stilton grins at her. 

“There have been reports of clashing between the Grand Guard and an occult obsessed gang named the Eyeless. A slaughter at the Albarca Baths left a lot of gang members dead. They had a caged fighter, some poor soul called the Black Magic Brute, that was freed by an unknown assailant. I went down to check on it with my staff and, while a bit tasteless in decoration, it didn’t really seem to set off any alarms.”

“But?”

Corvo hesitated, then handed over a folder with sketches of various faces, “Two high profile civilians were assassinated a few days ago. I thought I would wait to tell you in person. Ivan Jacobi, a highway administrator, and Shan Yun, the singer. They were clean jobs. Very professional. It was only after autopsies were performed that the coroner noted the two of them had the same tattoos, the mark that the rest of the Eyeless covet.

“These assassinations seem related to the murder of one Eleuterio Cienfuegos, a pharmacist and a painter. The paper is, predictably, placing that blame on the Crown Killer.”

She does not look at Hypatia. Her eyes do not leave Corvo’s. 

“I think Jacobi killed Cienfuegos, among others. The Eyeless have been reported to be fond of medical experiments,” Hypatia states. “Siphoning the life from captives to ‘bolster their connection to the Void’ or some such. In reality they are subjecting themselves to harmful toxins that cause illusions and manifest alternate memories to the compatible truth.”

“You know an awful lot about this,” the Lord Protector says, from his spot against the wall.

“Some of my research at Addermire has delved into the harmful psychological effects of medical malpractice. A great deal of it, actually.”

Her eyes briefly meet Emily’s, and she realizes that the doctor is having just a little fun. 

“Apparently he also had a fascinating tattoo on his neck. But his murder wasn’t ‘clean and professional’. Cienfuegos’ autopsy report is available for your reading, if you don’t believe me.”

The Empress shakes her head, “Lord Protector Mayhew will not give you the impression that he means to challenge your knowledge on the affairs and workings of the city, he’s simply on edge as he enacts his role as my bodyguard. We all are rather sensitive towards danger, after the coup in Dunwall, and we all wish to do our best to protect those we love.”

Jerimiah looks bashful and Corvo mouths _“Mayhew?”_ at her when the lad isn’t looking. Emily nods and smiles, looking to continue the conversation.

“Back to the assassinations. Professional, you say. Did you have anyone in mind?”

“Not yet. I asked my personal Spymaster to keep an eye on monetary transactions going to and from the Dolores Michaels Deposit & Loan Bank, the Bank of Batista, and the Black Market finances. But we haven’t found anything to suggest these were done by a group for hire. Some individuals report smaller contracts done for hire, though, in the same areas. Targets that were far lower in profile, illicit arrangements accepted by the same person each time, according to the Black Market merchants that we… pestered..”

“A woman?” Emily sighs.

“Yes. With a prosthetic arm and eye. How did you―”

“Father, her ship is literally sitting in the fishing wharfs. Even I could tell from here that it’s the Dreadful Wale.”

Hypatia and Stilton, the latter in particular, give her confused and shocked looks. Jerimiah rested his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“You mean to say―”

“No,” Stilton says, shaking his head. “Meagan’s not an assassin. She’s a smuggler and helped you orchestrate the necessary expeditions to restore balance to this city, but―”

“Meagan Foster is not a real identity, Amaris. Her real name is Billie Lurk, once the right hand assistant of the assassin Daud. She ran with the group that helped kill my mother, she admitted to it herself when last we saw each other in Dunwall.”

The mining baron looks shocked and hurt, but Hypatia rests a hand on his arm. 

“You said the assailant taking out assassination contracts from the Black Markets had a prosthetic arm and eye. Last you saw of _Meagan Foster_ , two and a half months ago, she was not maimed in any such way? As a medical professional, I would argue she would not be able to recover after any injury of that devastation within the time frame we have and be able to perform the sort of physical exertion a professional assassin needs to kill two people undetected.” 

“We should be careful not to accuse people without hard evidence. I think we all know the aftermath of that sort of treachery,” Corvo ponders. “We can search her boat, especially if it’s abandoned. We wouldn’t need to go through any sort of paperwork or legal permissions.”

“You really are a different man from the last Duke,” Stilton says, letting out a huff. “I don’t want to accuse Meagan by any means but if she told you she was the assassin that killed your mother, Emily, why did you let her go?”

She feels her father’s eyes upon her.

_Because she wasn’t that person anymore. Because she helped you back to your throne? Because you felt something for her that you shouldn’t have? You even sent her some gold from the reserves, after the coup was over, to pay her back for the help._

“Delilah was a more important at the time. And I didn’t want to jeopardize Sokolov’s safety.”

A sharp, hurried knock hits the metal framing of the glass door that separates Corvo’s study from the rest of the Grand Palace. Emily nods to Jerimiah, who crosses the room to open it. An officer hurries in, out of breath, and nearly crashes into the Duke’s desk.

“What is it, what’s wrong?” her father asks, his brow furrowing in confusion.

“There’s been another assassination, my lord. Dolores Michaels. We found her body, same as the others in Upper Cyria. And one of her vaults was robbed.”

“Who owned the vault?”

“It was a joint account, between Shan Yun and Ivan Jacobi.”

Emily pulls her pistol out of her coat and checks it, “I wonder if Delores Michaels had a tattoo on her neck. I’m going to the Dreadful Wale, father.”

“Please, Your Majesty,” Stilton begs, ignoring the presence of other guards filling the room. “If you can help it, spare her life.”

Emily gives the aging miner a pensive look. She knows he finds comfort in Meagan’s company, but how does he refuse to see that Billie Lurk is a completely different persona? She closes her eyes and lets out a deep sigh. She counts to five. All of the eyes in the room are upon her.

“Should she willingly surrender, I will allow a fair trial, Stilton. And if Billie Lurk can procure evidence that she did not assassinate three different people in Karnaca, then she has no sentence or execution to fear.”

It’s not enough for Stilton, but he’s not the only person Emily has to think about. There’s only so much carnage she can ignore. Even if Billie had apologized for her mother’s death, to continue killing? 

_You’re a killer too, Emily. You’re sitting in a room with a man who ended people during the Rat Plague, and the woman who helped start all of the problems that brought you to Karnaca in the first place._

She stands, motioning to her Lord Protector. 

“Will you accompany us, Duke Attano?”

“We can use our dockside skiffs, it will be quicker than the carriage rails.,” Corvo nods. 

There is a sadness in her father’s eyes, as though he’s being dragged into an age old fight that he’s finally put behind him. Stilton walks out of the room in anger, in defeat. Alexandria Hypatia has her gaze cast towards the ground with a hesitant expression, as though she knows something that Emily does not. But she doesn’t have the time to press a medical doctor for information on a lethal threat to the city. 

Between Corvo, herself, Mayhew, and three other guards, they take two skiffs towards the Santiago Fisheries. But they don’t even make it all the way across the bay.

“Slow down!” she commands, over the roar of the engines. 

The fire lights up her skin from here. The Dreadful Wale’s deck and interior is almost entirely made of wood; old, dry, rotting wood that lights up like a newspaper. She’s not sure if Meagan― _Billie_ is aboard the ship, yet she is almost certain this is deliberate. Why would a sinking ship docked at an abandoned port suddenly drift out to the middle of the bay and light itself on fire? 

Corvo and Jerimiah await her orders but she sits in silence, letting the skiffs drift among the waves. Finally, she turns to the skiff filled with guards.

“Mark this site and return with a team in the morning. Hire out some pearl divers to sift through the wreck if you need to. Anything left behind is linked to the assassinations.”

“Do you think she’s dumb enough to leave behind evidence?” Jerimiah asked.

“There’s something down there. Some reason she lit an entire ship on fire. She’s not like Delilah or Luca… Billie Lurk is practical and concise, she is _anything_ but dramatic. This… this served a purpose. Something she wanted destroyed.”

Emily didn’t sleep well that night.

  
  


**The Song is Written In More Than One Language**

  
  
  


He stares at her, and she realizes that he’s not coherent. Like someone who's just been stabbed and trying to speak through the blood they’re drowning in. He blinks, and his eyes are no longer black, but that vibrant green she’s seen once before.

The back of her hand burns enough to wake her up.

“Ah! Gods, what the fuck?”

There’s nothing there. Well, there’s some light scarring, as though the back of her hand has been cut a few times by a sharp knife. Certainly feels that way.

But there’s not a black brand on her skin, forming the infamous mark known across the Isles. Emily sits up and flips the light switch in her room. It’s got to be the early, early morning, and aside from a few patrols in the hallways and the gardens, no one else will be up. The Empress reaches out and tries to cast her Dark Vision spell, but she can’t remember the words. She doesn’t feel the _connection_ anymore. 

Corvo is sitting up in his bed when she enters, lost in thought.

“Did you dream about him, too?”

“Very briefly. He didn’t say anything to me, hasn’t in fifteen years. Why would he appear, all of a sudden?”

The door is shut but Emily lowers her voice anyways. 

“Something must have happened to him. I can’t use my… _abilities_. The Void. I can’t feel it anymore,” she whispers. 

It’s been a few days of radio silence. No one has managed to find any trace of Billie Lurk and the contracts have stopped. No one else has died. No more leads. Why now? What did she do?!

The only thing the salvagers had managed to find aboard the Dreadful Wale was a skeleton. Hypatia had examined it herself, shrugging before the Duke’s court and saying that it was a man roughly Corvo’s age, had died before the fire, and that, other than missing a few teeth, she couldn’t tell what had killed him. 

“I need to find her. I need to talk to her. Even if I let her go for the murders… she had something to do with this,” Emily sighs, holding up her hand. “And I won’t rest until I know the truth.”

Corvo hesitated, gently gripping her shoulders, “You and I can’t go around chasing rumors about The Outsider. You know the Abbey of the Everyman will flay us alive if we do.” 

“Can you make a diversion? One night is all I need, Father.”

“Are you taking your Lord Protector with you?”

“Jealous, Father? No. No, he’s still getting used to his job. I’ll find someone who can help me track her, or go at it alone but carefully.”

Corvo’s eyes narrow disapprovingly, “Why did you appoint him anyways? You could easily beat him in a duel.”

“I tossed a grenade straight into the air above my head and he shot it with his rifle from across the Tower courtyard before it even came close to dissintegrating me. He crossed Gristol in three days and got into a witch and mechanical soldier infested city without dying. He managed to infiltrate my Throne Room during the coup without anyone knowing and retrieve his sister’s body. Maybe he’s very qualified for a foot soldier without magical powers, and maybe a part of me is doing this out of duty to Alexi.”

“You’re the one that’s protecting him.”

“She would have been Royal Protector if she had survived. The Mayhew family has a long line of military service, and I don’t have anyone else left in Dunwall. Even if he didn’t win the Blade Verbena when he was sixteen, I have a good feeling about him.” 

Corvo rolls his eyes but relents. Emily cups her father’s face in her hands and gives him a loving kiss on the forehead, savoring the brief time they’ll have together now that they rule separate countries. She lets him get the rest of his sleep but gains none of her own. The clocks are too loud. The impending dawn is too bright. The sheets are too warm. The pieces she’s been given don’t fit the rest of the puzzle.

She goes to Addermire on an “official tour”, brining only Jerimiah with her. He keeps quiet in the carriage ride over, despite looking ready to burst with questions about the murders that have so passionately engaged his employer and monarch. 

“I’m going to be going on… an _excursion_ tonight. Alone. I’m sure I’ll get into a fight, but the less people involved the safer. I’d like you to keep an eye on Stilton for me. Make sure he doesn’t do anything rash, nor anyone come to harm him.”

Her Lord Protector nods, then gives her a confused look, “Am I supposed to advise you against that? I’m not sure if that’s within my capacity.”

“I don’t think there’s ever been a Lord Protector who had a monarch quite like me to guard. I have training, and a number of tools at my disposal. I will be alright. And you are always free to advise me against bad ideas but this is the one time I can’t accept your advice.”

Jerimiah smiles a little, meeting her gaze with something sad but understanding.

“Alexi loved talking about you. She thought you got yourself into too much trouble.”

“She was right. About almost anything and everything. It’s why she made Captain at so young an age,” Emily states matter-of-factly.

Hypatia meets her at the steps of Addermire, a team of eager medical staff behind her. They’re all young; various Academy graduates and local doctors who’d been attempting to practice private clinics throughout the city after the former Duke had closed the Institute off. All of them seemed bright and happy to be back. Hypatia wears a proper lab coat, a pale blue that sets her apart from the others in white as the leader; but beneath the formal attire are her casual overalls that identify her as _Alexandria_. 

“Welcome to Addermire Institute, your Royal Highness. Here is Karnaca’s beloved medical institute, formerly a solarium for those who had wealth, and now reformed to accept all who require attention; in the name of promoting our nation’s public health to a status that rivals all others.”

“Director Hypatia, am I to understand you’ve undergone complete and utter renovation in only two months?”

Her friend smiles at her, a full and vibrant grin, “We will always have more work to do, but that doesn’t mean we cannot open our facilities to those who need them! How can we combat the Bloodfly Fever if we do not immediately get to work?”

“Very good, Doctor. Will you show me the premises? I imagine your talented staff has work to get on with.”

“Of course.”

Jerimiah waits by the carriage with the newest edition of the Silver Spike, rifle in his lap.

“What have you done to the place?”

Hypatia’s eyes light up, “Oh, did you want an actual tour? I thought you might have just come to talk.”

“I want to do both, but I actually want to see what you’ve done, of course! I know you’ve worked night and day.”

“Admittedly… I’m getting the same amount of sleep as I was… when the Institute was closed, but this time I’m actually procuring results! The new staff are all terrific! And the construction has brought in much needed jobs for the city, something besides mining.”

“A coup is bad for leaders, terrific for an economy, it seems,” Emily sighs. She rubs her eyes and feels a sympathetic squeeze at her bicep.

All of the broken glass windows were replaced, the fading green paint replaced with a vibrant red that fits the newly polished marble walls that glimmer in the sun. The rooms are filled with new furniture made in the stylish Serkonan aesthetics, the wooden frames carved from the redwood trees that litter the hills and threaten to spill over the edges of the city. Some starving young artist has been commissioned to paint murals and new artworks, replacing the dreadfully depressing pieces that reminded Emily all too well of the rat plague. It’s absolutely _vibrant_ here.

“What do you think?” Alexandria asks, nervously tugging at her own hands.

Emily glances at the way the light streams in through the main entrance and lets out a pleased sigh, “I want you to decorate Dunwall Tower.”

“Ah. Yes. It was decided that we’d splurge a little on our design, more so than our medical equipment, even. We’d found that people recover faster when they’re not confined to depressing environments. The psychological effects of our surroundings affecting our physical health... no wonder we were stagnant after the Institute closed.”

“Yeah. I want to check in for a couple of months myself. I’m dead serious, I may very well have an institute built in Gristol.”

“Do you want to see my laboratory, Your Majesty?”

“Lead the way, Doctor Hypatia.”

A miner gives Emily a gentle smile as a nurse sits him down, inspecting his broken arm. Through the windows, as they climb the stairs, she can see boats and skiffs bounding across the bay, docking and departing from the stone berth at the shoreline of the hospital. The hospital smells clean, but not so sickly strong of rubbing alcohol like it had the last time she was there― in the Grand Guard’s attempt to clean up what blood they could. She tried not to think of it, to focus instead on how Alexandria had set up memorial portraits of Hamilton and Vasco on the walls. How the cooks, Gus and Imelda, were gushing to meet the Empress and serve her whatever food she was hungry for.

“Ah, perhaps some Saggunto bread and… pear sodas,” Hypatia asked, with a thoughtful tone. “Just something nice and easy. We don’t want to disturb your schedule.”

“It’s… it’s the Empress, madam. Are you sure?”

“Ah, of course. My apologies, your Majesty, was there anything in particular you wanted? We have a little of everything here, for those with dietary restrictions or even just personal preferences, or even―”

“Honestly some bread and Padilla soda sounds great. Perhaps a little of that famed Serkonan sausage would be fun, but I agree with the doctor. We do not wish to tire you with unnecessary requests,” Emily chuckled. 

Gus gave her as deep of a bow as he could, “By all means! I can have that for you in a minute. Shall I deliver it to the Recuperation Rooms?” 

“Ah, no. Let’s do the Balcony. Thank you, my friend.”

“Very good, Director Hypatia.”

Hypatia takes her by the hand, and even though some people eye the informality, the _absolute_ familiarity between them... Emily can’t care anymore.

The Recuperation Rooms are blocked off with two sets of doors instead of one, and until she enters the actual corridors, Emily can’t place why. Hypatia asks her to make sure the doors behind her are fully closed before the next set are opened. When she finally sees what’s inside, the Empress lets out a genuine gasp. The Bloodfly nests have been completely eradicated, and the tanning beds are gone as well. Instead, the halls are filled with plants of all types, smelling deeply of Pandysian spices and fresh earth. The marble walls and old windows have been replaced with glass that allows the Karnacan heat to become trapped, and the creatures happily thrive and flutter in the sunlight. 

Her jaw drops, “Oh… how adorable!”

“You’ll have to thank Amaris for this, officially the Stilton Lepidop Terrarium **.** It was his personal donation. Pissed off Ms. Pastor quite a bit, when they could spend the money on the miners instead, but the patients really love coming up here to relax and destress.”

Hypatia laughs at Emily’s wonder and dips her pinkie finger into a jar labeled Tree Sap. She holds out her hand and three different butterflies land on her arm, eager to taste the new smell that they’ve sensed. All sorts of different colors and sizes, Emily’s never seen so much life in one room. Eventually, after the insects have lost interest in Hypatia, and the bright colors of Emily’s clothes, she is led to the Doctor’s personal laboratory. 

It’s been replaced with different lighting, like she’d thought, but the shutters have been torn down and replaced with curtains, all of which are open. All of the… mess has been cleared up. Art hangs from the walls and scientific models decorate various parts of the massive room. There’s still a small cot, as old habits die hard, but the lab equipment is polished within an inch of its life and hundreds of textbooks run along the bottom shelves throughout the room, a quarter of them psychological studies. 

“Are there any organs in here that I should know of?”

“Yes, of course, but safely preserved. Not… not casually tossed around like some beast’s cavern. The laboratory is sanitized before and after down to the last tile. Subjects of study are kept in airtight containers in cold storage in the back room. We’ve found that a dropped temperature can keep deceased tissue from turning rancid.”

“Good. Good. Anyone I know?”

Alexandria playfully smacks her arm, “Come on, let me show you the Balcony. I love reading out here.” 

They take the elevator all the way up to the office, and then up the stairs to where Hamilton used to live. Emily looks for the dispenser trap that nearly put a bolt in her heart, but like the rest of the malicious mechanics in the Institute, it, too, has been removed. Instead, Hamilton’s old room has been replaced with wooden walls, and Alexandria pulls a lever at the door. 

“Artagon Groff, the new Grand Inventor, based this off of the architectural plans found in Kirin Jindosh’s mansion. He’s going to try experimenting with the idea of malleable buildings as we expand and rebuild the city. It’s a little over the top― but very appreciated.”

The wooden walls begin to collapse and fold away, granting them a sheltered place to sit and admire Karnaca Bay, at the tallest point on the island. Like theatre curtains drawing to reveal a staged scene. Emily leans against the railing and feels the wind against her face as though she’s sailing at sea once more. 

“You work fast in Karnaca.”

“Sunny days are always more appropriate for construction.”

“Hmm.”

She glances back at Alexandria Hypatia, whose arms are crossed in casual relaxation rather than defense. They both smile at each other and something just… falls into place. 

  
  
  


**Black Sparrow, Careful Not To Break Your Wings**

  
  
  


“I don’t approve of this, Emily.”

She buttons up the jacket that Corvo has given her. It's genderless and blends in with the darkness around them. He reaches out to untuck the lapels and pull up her hood. Then, he gives her the mask. The skull imagery it depicts reminds her of the silent rescue from the Golden Cat, all those years ago. 

“Never thought I’d wear this. The scarf and cap were always enough to conceal me.”

Corvo’s aging face gives her the communication of scruffy criticism. “The mask can stop a bullet to the head. I’d prefer that you have that extra protection if you go out to face a trained assassin.”

“I’m going to try a diplomatic approach first. I once saw reason with her when instead I could have chosen violence… I’m hoping she would extend the same generosity.”

“What quarters are you going to search?”

Emily takes the collapsable sword from him and slips it into the holster at her thigh. He provides her with her crossbow and pistol, then slips a vest meant for resisting ballistic impact over her shoulders. 

“I’ll start with Cyria, to see what I can pick up from that region,” she sighs. “Then I’ll move over to Aventa, unless the trail takes me to Batista.”

He glances her over once, to make sure she has everything she needs, then shakes his head and walks away. Emily knows that Corvo will never approve of her sneaking around and learning what she can when she has Spymasters and officers to do that for her, but it feels like she was born to do this. She climbs up, grunting as she pushes over a ledge and leaps up onto a ventilation pipe. Muscles strain and crack, having barely been used in months. Her fingers burn under the stress of carrying her weight as she ascends the buildings. 

This was easier with powers.

Just as she’s lifting herself up onto the shingles of an apartment, complete with a Winslow Safe store on the ground floor, something brushes past her. Emily quickly glances up and sees a figure running along the horizon towards the northern section of the city.

“Father?” she hisses loudly, glancing around to see if anyone’s watching. “Is that you?”

As far as she can tell, it’s not Billie Lurk. This person has both their arms, but she can’t quite make out the eyes. Emily attempts to catch up for a little while before she realizes that she’s not nearly as quick as whoever the silent vigilante is. The figure leaps across the wide gap of a thorofare without hesitation, a jump that Emily wouldn’t dare attempt without powers, and continues heading in the direction of Upper Cyria. 

It’s not so much a game of chase. The figure pauses and waits for Emily to catch up several times, silent no matter what the Empress attempts to call out. 

She loses track once or twice, but just as she’s searching for the figure again, the young woman finds herself slipping on a loose shingle and nearly falling off the roof of some dentist office or whatnot. A pair of hands gently reach out and wrap around her midsection before she can tumble to her death. Her mysterious companion gently pulls her to safety, to the peak of a rooftop where they can keep low and balanced. Emily turns to thank them.

But the yellow eyes are hard to forget and forgive.

“I thought you had this under control.”

This version of Grim Alex, or whatever it calls itself now, is more pensive. Strategic. And very, very quiet. The alchemist lowers her hood and mask, and takes in a deep breath― sniffing the air once, twice, three times before glancing back at Emily. 

“I am under control. I can track her for you.”

Her voice is still gravely and deep, changed by the counterserum, but not sadistic. No, if anything, Emily can hear more of Hypatia’s reservation and poise in this tone than the Crown Killer’s unpredictable brutality. The figure stands, tall and graceful. Completely unlike the hunched over monster mindlessly roaming Addermire all those weeks ago. 

Another sniff of the air, and the yellow eyes narrow.

“She’s not here anymore. At least, she’s not in Upper Cyria. The scent is a week old. But I can smell Wolfhound fur and gunpowder drifting in from the northeast. The Overseers in the Royal Conservatory, perhaps.”

The Crown Killer doesn’t even wait for Emily to respond, she continues sprinting along the rooftops, forcing Emily to try and keep up as best as she can. The effects of the serum, despite Vasco’s best efforts, are extraordinary to watch. Grim Alex can jump three times as far as a normal athlete, but she barely makes a sound. As far as Emily can tell, too, the hunter carries no weapons. They travel along the canal for quite some time until she realizes that they passed the Royal Conservatory quite some time ago. 

“Where are we going?”

“Hmm… the scent leaves the city, but comes back.”

Emily sits down to catch her breath, but Alex remains standing, her hands in her pockets as she stares out towards the horizon with piercing yellow eyes.

“Anything important to the north of the city?”

“An old quarry on Shindaerey Peak. Strange…”

“What? What is it?”

The alchemist sniffs again, “Meagan Foster came back this way with someone else. Someone that smells like magic, and the Void.”

“The Void has a smell?”

She’s off running again, and Emily lets out a light groan as she’s forced to stand up and follow. They separate again, despite the gut feeling she has that she can’t let Alex out of her sight, lest something bad happen. Emily eventually scales down to the dimly lit streets and glances around. 

A flash of something in the corner of her eyes, and red mass slams her against a wall. 

“Why are you wearing a mask, Your Majesty? It doesn’t suit you.”

The familiar voice sets her off balance, but so does the collision her head suffered against the stone wall. Billie has her pinned down and stunned. A perfect move for a trained killer.

“Get it over with, then. You won the bout.”

Her former Captain steps away and summons a sword out of thin air. It points towards the Empress’ throat, but makes no motion to slit the life from her. Emily removes her father’s mask so that she can see better.

Billie Lurk looks completely different from Meagan Foster. The red outfit reminds her of the silent assassin appearing out of thin air and killing her mother. The eyes that bore into her own are not the same, one brown and tired, the other made of some sort of volcanic glass that shines with a hint of red. Billie’s right arm is gone once again, some strange Void rock hand connected to whale bone gives off an ominous, threatening aura to the assassin. Where Meagan Foster was patient and scolding, like a teacher attempting to guide a student… Billie Lurk looks dangerous and determined. 

Grim Alex is right, she does smell like dark magic.

“Did _he_ do this?”

“Yes. But you did too, didn’t you?”

The eye flickers, seeing something that Emily cannot. A swirl of blue and green energy flicks from her left hand and she’s twenty feet away, and before Emily can prepare herself for a fight, Lurk has slammed her against the wall again, swirls of blue and green flashing in her face. 

“Every time I look at Aramis Stilton’s face, I see two different people. I see the tall, proud owner of the mines taking care of the poor people of the Dust District, and then I see a hunched over, decrepit and insane sod living in his broken down home. I can’t even go near his house, it gives me a headache.”

Emily tries to shift, but the wrist pressed against her windpipe keeps her in place.

“The Outsider stole my eye and arm and gave me these, or perhaps he merely applied prosthetics to a body that was injured three years ago. What really happened, Emily?”

“Are you really going to blame me for messing with reality when it was the Outsider who created the Timepiece in the first place?” she asks, through a hoarse voice.

“He only ever bestows opportunities. The mortals are the ones that make the choices.”

A loud growl of a familiar tone is heard from somewhere above, distracting the assassin. Emily manages to kick Billie away, readying her father’s sword and her modified pistol. Her opponent looks anything but scared, scanning the rooftops. 

“Are you actually traipsing around with the beast, Empress Kaldwin? I suppose the papers were r―”

“This isn’t about her.”

“No,” Billie scowls. “It isn’t.”

A pause.

Maybe she should just kill her and be done with it.

Emily moves the barrel of the pistol away from the other woman’s heart. The gentle flicker of blue and green swirling around Billie’s hand begins to fade as she cancels her spell. 

“I left a different version of Meagan Foster behind in the Batista neighborhood. A Meagan Foster that was sweet for me. She was missing an arm and an eye because she had attempted to infiltrate Aramis Stilton’s home a few days after he went missing. Inside the manor, the Outsider presented me with a device to manipulate time, that I might learn what had happened to Delilah. I… I messed with what was. I knocked Aramis Stilton out so that he wouldn’t watch Ashworth’s seance and go mad. It created a domino effect on that whole region of the city. When I left the manor, the version of Meagan Foster that I encountered had all her appendages, and never knew what I felt for her.”

Billie gives her a patronizing smirk, “I’m sorry you fell in love with me.”

“Me too. So, now that I’ve told you my story, I’d like to hear yours. Why did you set your boat on fire?”

“The Dreadful Wale was sinking. I expedited the process.”

“Who was the skeleton we found aboard it?”

“Daud. Died in his sleep.”

“Why is my connection to the Void gone?”

“I killed the Outsider.”

Emily taps the trigger on her pistol in thought, but doesn’t fire it. Instead, she lowers her weapons and gives Billie a raised eyebrow. The older woman rolls her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose in annoyance for a silent thirty seconds before letting out a sigh.

“Come on out. I won’t let her hurt you.”

From a dark corner, a teenage boy peers out, his green eyes shining with curiosity. Emily’s jaw drops but she slowly sheathes her weapons and crosses her arms. His hair is black and combed towards his face, his clothes battered and belonging to someone of the lower classes. There’s a hunch in his walk, a meekness about him. He’s scared. 

“If you killed the Outsider, who’s this?”

Billie keeps a protective stance between the Empress and him. 

“Baita,” she says.

The boy nods, keeping absolutely silent and letting the adults navigate the conversation. Strange, in all of their confrontations… Emily had never really noticed how young the god appeared. But this kid, Baita, couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“It was Daud’s idea, Emily. He’s just a boy. ‘The Outsider’ was just a representative of the Void, he wasn’t in control of it. And he can’t do magic anymore. He’s harmless.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she spots a figure among the chimneys, watching all of this go down with crossed arms and a yellow gaze.

“Why did you murder a banker, a city administrator, and a singer?”

“Because that’s my profession.”

“What’s going to happen to the Void?”

Billie chuckles, “I don’t know. Anything could happen. It might just swallow all the stars in our sky, but I took him out of there because it seemed like he wanted to be free. Maybe the Void will just collapse into nothingness. Maybe the Void will choose a new Outsider. It’s had one for four thousand years, it might not feel comfortable without someone to speak for it.”

“That may very well be you. You must be the only person left who can tap into its magic. You understand that you would very well be a candidate to get sucked in and trapped as the new Outsider, right?”

“Maybe. It’s better than some poor kid, isn’t it?”

“I doubt it. Common people are out here just trying to survive gangs and illnesses and kings and queens. Do they really need supernatural spirits lurking in every crack and crevice?”

The woman who helped kill her mother glances back at the boy who helped Emily save her father. Some sense of finality lingers in the air, and when Billie nods, the teenager that was once the Outsider goes running down the alleyway, disappearing around the corner. 

“I’ll take care of him. Teach him how... he knows four-thousand years worth of secrets, but I know forty years worth of being a person. I don’t know if we can ever be normal, if any of us can ever forget what happened and what we’ve done… but we’ll try to lay low and do things right. I promise.”

“Trust is hard to come by, Lurk. Consider this the last of mine.”

The Twin-Bladed Knife flickers and dissipates out of existence. Billie gently takes Emily’s face with her one good hand and kisses her on the forehead. The Whaler’s lips drift down and meet hers, and Emily can taste the faint memory of the Dust District. But Billie doesn’t kiss anything like Meagan Foster. She kisses like an assassin.

There’s a whisper of void magic, and she’s gone, leaving Emily alone in the cold midnight air.

  
  
  


**Can We Fix Unbroken Objects?**

  
  
  


It takes her all night to cross the Karnaca rooftops, ending up in the familiar section of the Campo Seta Dockyards. The sun is beginning to rise and her eyelids are beginning to droop. Emily keeps to the shadows but knows that she needs to hide before someone realizes there’s an assailant running around threatening the good citizens of Serkonos. 

The balcony doors to Alexandria’s apartment are wide open, allowing the morning sunshine to creep in. Emily drops to the railing and hears running water, some steam escaping from the bathroom.

“Doctor Hypatia?” 

She realizes that the mask muffles her voice, and removes it.

“Alexandria? Are you in there?”

The wooden floors creak and groan a little, as the building was built in the style that was popular forty years ago. She notes that the place is cleaner than last she saw it. Everything is organized and she cannot find any evidence of science. Instead there is a kitchen and bedroom where there was once a miniature laboratory. The tall cabinet, presumably filled with medical documents, is gone as well. She’s placed new furniture within her living room and there’s evidence that she’s had friends over more and more. Emily’s heart skips at the sketch on her desk of the Dreadful Wale. 

_You miss it as much as me. The planning and conspiring. Being someone you’re not._

She gently knocks on the bathroom door, but it swings open unlocked. Alexandria is sitting in the tub, fully clothed with what she’d been wearing the previous night. Her brown eyes give Emily some relief, but they stare into nothingness as the tub fills with hot water. The buzz from the overhead lightbulb mixes with the sound of sloshing water and the ticking of a clock somewhere in the apartment.

Emily doesn’t say anything. She just kneels down and rests her arms on the porcelain rim. 

“I don’t… I saw you running across the rooftops from my balcony last night and I was so scared that you were in danger. I just wanted to protect you and… _she_ just… she took over.”

Hypatia’s hands reach out for the hot water, and she just sits there letting it run over her fingers. Emily has a feeling that she’s both here in this room and somewhere else entirely.

“I know it’s wrong. I know I’m a monster. But it felt so… natural. I didn’t kill anybody, did I?”

“No,” Emily quickly says. “It was different this time. Completely different. And you’re not a monster. It was just a slip up. Has this happened at any other point since we used Vasco’s counterserum?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve been… sleeping well, remembering everything, eating and doing normal things.”

Emily reaches into the tub and takes a shaking hand, and she sees a slight shift in the brown eyes. There’s fear, so much fear. Tears begin to spill and Emily knows that none of this was her intention.

“You’re not in trouble. I’m not angry at you.”

The water sloshes into her cuffs but she keeps holding her friend’s hand. There’s a squeeze against her fingers and Alexandria finally looks at her.

“Can I spend the rest of my life like this? Just looking over my shoulder for _her_? What if I slip up and hurt someone?”

Emily brings a hamper over, “We’ll figure it out, together. But why don’t we get you cleaned up and in dry clothes first?”

“But I―”

“Look under your nails, Alex. Do you see blood?”

The doctor glances down.

“There’s no blood. You didn’t hurt anyone. It’s okay. Finish up your bath and I’ll get some tea going, okay?”

Something snaps into her and she finally takes a deep breath before following Emily’s instructions. There’s a sweep over the bathroom, undetectable by the doctor, for any possible sharp objects. As Hypatia takes off the soaked grey coat, Emily pockets some scissors. Theoretically, the mirror could be broken, but she would hear that before anything could happen. She’d break down the door if she has to. But she isn’t even sure that thought process has crossed Alexandria’s mind yet.

The kitchen is very organized, and not quite broken in. She prepares tea and pulls out a few cans of Pratchett Jellied Eels, Bastillian figs, and local grapes, and begins to work on a nice plate of assortments. 

She looks different with her hair wet and dangling straight down instead of in the signature style that she normally dons. The smell of fruit scented shampoo hits her nose and evokes a reminder of Wyman. Alexandria is just in a robe as she sits down on the couch. Her body language is closed off, her arms holding each other as though she’s protecting herself from attack. 

Food is brought to the coffee table. Then tea. None of it is touched.

“Do you feel any better?”

Hypatia glances out the window at Addermire Station, “I don’t know.”

“If… if we can’t figure out how to get rid of this problem, would you be okay with us figuring out how to control it? Not use it! Just… compromising?”

Alexandria picks up her cup of tea, stares at it, and places it down on the trail. Emily could understand the nausea. After she’d beaten Delilah, she wasn’t able to touch food for at least two days. The way it glues your mouth shut and depresses you. 

“That may be my only option. If the counterserum continues to fail, after multiple doses, I don’t know how else I can cure this.”

“Do you remember what happened last night?”

“Yes. I remember leading you to Cyria Gardens. I remember you confronting Meagan Foster. But… the memories aren’t as clear as this conversation we’re having. I didn’t black out, though. And… I didn’t hear Grim Alex taunting me like before. It was silence instead. Whatever personality I created in my original serum, I think Vasco’s concoction altered it, rather than removing the problem entirely.”

Emily tries the tea and, surprisingly enough, she isn’t the worst barista in the world. Hypatia doesn’t touch the food, lost in thought.

Before she can do anything, the alchemist takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. When she opens them again, they’re bright yellow. 

“Er… are you okay? Alexandria?”

The woman stares at her hands, at the tray of food, at her apartment and the bathrobe she sits in. For a good minute, neither of them say anything. The Empress sets down her teacup and studies how the muscles in the woman across from her have tensed and become more defined. 

“Are you armed?” the raspy voice asks.

“Yes,” Emily says, opening her coat just enough so that Alex can see her pistol.

“Okay. Just… let me try…”

Grim Alex closes her eyes. Hypatia reopens them. A soft, thoughtful brown. 

“You didn’t kill anyone that time,” Emily smiles. “But… wow… that’s amazing. You may very well be able to control your condition, even if you can’t get rid of it entirely.”

“Let’s hope so. Yes, the main concern was that I would slip up and hurt someone. That’s all I want to prevent,” Alexandria sighs. “The more I practice, the more likely I will be able to govern when it appears and when it does not. Much as I would wish for her not to exist…”

Impulsively, she pulls the doctor into a hug, her fingers threading through damp hair. Hesitation prevents the other woman from moving for just a second, and then the embrace is welcomed and returned. Emily chuckles into the soft silk of the bathrobe and takes in the smell of the shampoo once more.

**Something That is Not What I Remember**

  
  
  


Dunwall will always be grey. It will always have an air of sadness about it. There will always be rats and river krusts and hagfish. 

Her new Royal Physician is allowed to travel freely among the Isles, mainly going between Serkonos and Gristol over the next few months to continue studying the Bloodfly Fever _and_ oversee the construction of several hospitals in the Empire. A wave of medical students, who grew up in the shadow of the rat plague, emerge and help her bolster the health of the common folk. 

The Void grows unstable for a while, rifts opening up here and there; even severely damaging the city of Alba. That’s one of the few times she writes to Wyman in a tone of emergency and fear. But no beasts pour out. The stars in the sky are not yet swallowed. 

A boy comes to visit the Tower, and is turned away with a few coins and a letter of apology. The guard captain on duty explains that the Empress regrettably doesn’t recognize anyone by the name of “Baita”. 

Jerimiah Mayhew becomes one of the most popular Royal Protectors of all time when he single handedly destroys a rogue Clockwork Soldier before it can slice its way through Parliament. The wooden and steel pieces fall to the carpeted floor, the sound of crackling electricity mixing with the mutters and gasps from the noble lords and ladies. They investigate that threat, naturally, to find that some misguided engineers of the Academy of Natural Philosophy were tinkering around with plans left behind by the infamous Kirin Jindosh.

Flowers bloom far better in the palace courtyard than they had before. The building that had once been guard’s quarters remains a greenhouse, despite its origin at witch’s hands. But the rest of the Tower is refurbished in a little more modern of style, not quite Karnacan’s sleek aesthetic, but something a little more stoic. There are hidden mechanics in the walls, and she’s certain that somewhere deep in the sewers and catacombs, there are more whalebone secrets and dark whispers than she could ever possibly imagine.

The Empress dreams once or twice (or a dozen times) of a woman in a red jacket and an arm of bone, walking aimlessly through the Void. Sometimes, for a few seconds at a time, another woman with long blonde hair joins her; a kind happiness fills the assassin's face and Emily realizes who the blonde woman just might be. The Abbey of the Everyman still continues to preach about a pale man with black eyes, but lone citizens throughout the Isles start carving a new symbol into whale bones that hasn’t been seen before. Whispering a new name. 

The Whaler.

Her father writes her weekly, despite the growing popularity of the radio. Things are on the mend everywhere in the Isles, and while Emily is smart enough to know that, sooner or later something bad will happen, she’s quite glad that she doesn’t need him to hold her hand anymore in order for her to make good choices for her people. Corvo is a smart man, a decent leader, and a very, very good father. Serkonos will be okay. She will too.

Emily misses her mother. That’s never going to change.

Spymaster Jameson Curnow seems intrigued at strategies to fight the Dunwall gangs, such as parlays and the decree to allow the Fugue Feast happen four times a year instead of once. Sometimes the guards give her weary looks, and the advisors don’t always have a response, stunned by how lenient she can be with certain criminal activity. Emily Kaldwin doesn’t mind, she’s always been a little unconventional.

The evenings, when she can kick up her feet, become more and more needed the older she gets. In the mornings her feet ache from the occasional sprint across the rooftops. Sometimes a yellow eyed woman runs with her. 

She’s still on the fence about procuring heirs. Wyman offers on occasion to smuggle her a baby that she can claim to be her own, and it’s a terribly tempting offer.

At least once a year she visits Alexi Mayhew’s grave and cries. Jerimiah stands in silence most of the time, but there is one day when he kneels down in the dirt with her and holds her hand as they talk about how kind the Captain of the City Watch was. 

The city comes and goes. That’s just how Dunwall is.

Her marriage to Alexandria Hypatia is private. It’s only when the new High Overseer spots the golden band on her finger three weeks after the fact that she relents and holds a cheerful, extravagant wedding. She was _this_ close to getting away with it. People ask how it happened. When the moment was that she fell in love. The answer she tells them each time is the same.

“Oh, it was gradual. Her kind heart. Her intelligence. Her sense of humor. Everything just clicked together one day.”

When Hypatia asks how it happened, Emily laughs and says to her wife;

“I think it was when you threw a bookcase at my head.”

The truth is a little more complex. Because she’d have to admit that she’s been deeply in love with many people over the years, and that only after marrying Alexandria was she truly able to let them go. With a young redhead who refused to break the rules no matter how trivial, standing tall and proud among a perfect row of soldiers. With a young noble, bored out of their wits with the real world, who adored pranking and escaping and being someone different than what the world expected of them. With the woman who helped kill her mother… or rather, the captain of a sinking ship, who frustrated and endeared her beyond belief. With a doctor who would spend the rest of her life hiding something, making peace with it every time her eyes shifted back to brown. 

She’ll never know what Alexi kissed like. Wyman’s kisses were exciting and new, because they were, really, the first person Emily had ever been with. Meagan’s kisses were tired but experienced. Billie’s was a farewell. (But Alexandria? She kisses like someone who is slowly learning who Emily has decided to become, every morning, as the Empress does the same to her.) 

“What about you? When did you realize you were in love with me?”

Hypatia smiles from behind the rim of her tea cup and runs her hands through Emily’s new (old) bob. The crackle of the fire sputters and spits, and somewhere in the darkest corner of her bedroom, a little magical vine continues to curl around the curtain rod, as it has been doing for years.

“Do you remember when I stitched that cut across your cheek?”

“Yes. I do. I was worried you were going to kill me,” she laughs.

“You always asked me to call you ‘Emily’ instead of ‘Your Majesty’. You insisted. And I know that you never ask that of Anton or Meagan, just me. You would correct me again and again. Even when your face was completely numb from Orbon Rum.”

She knows there’s far more to the story than just that. Because she knows Hypatia is lost in the thoughts of older memories, and that if she asked again tomorrow she’d be given a different anecdote;

_“When you invited me to stay aboard the Dreadful Wale…”_

_“Hmm… oh, I’d say the night before you took down the Duke. Lucia and I came to visit, and you promised all of us that you would do everything in your power to heal Karnaca.”_

_“Definitely the “official’ tour of the Institute. It was the proudest moment of my life.”_

  
  
  
  
  


Emily rolls over in the sheets and faces her wife.

“When did you fall in love with me?” 

Hypatia rubs her eyes, being woken up in the middle of her dream by a gentle tap on her shoulder, “Hmm… when did… when you refused to give up on me, Em. Go back to sleep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art is official concept art from Arkane Studios of Karnaca, sourced from the Dishonored wiki. I spent so much time on that stupid wiki but it was worth it!


End file.
